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Local restrictions will be Sweden’s new strategy against the coronavirus.
One of the proposals is the family quarantine, which Professor Agnes Wold considers “expensive and ineffective”.
– Eight out of ten who stay at home will probably do so in vain, he says.
Temporary measures and restrictions at the local level will be Sweden’s strategy to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in the future. That’s what state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell said at the Public Health Agency press conference earlier this week.
On the same day, Björn Eriksson, director of health and medical care in the Stockholm region, presented the family quarantine as a proposal in SVT’s “Aktuellt.”
– What is being discussed, among other things, is the isolation of domestic contacts in the home, he said.
Yesterday, state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell told Dagens Nyheter that the Swedish Public Health Agency, FHM, would have preferred to wait to present the proposal. The reason was that the details of a family quarantine are not entirely clear.
– Actually, we had no intention of raising that issue until we had a completely clear concept. Now we have to figure out how we solve the purely practical possibilities, he tells the newspaper.
80 percent at home unnecessarily
Agnes Wold, a doctor and professor of clinical bacteriology at the University of Gothenburg, is not so sure that the proposal for home isolation from household contacts is particularly effective.
Photo: Thomas Johansson
Agnes Wold.
The vast majority, 80 percent, are not infected by anyone close to them. And it’s unclear how long a family quarantine would last. One or two weeks? And the cost of keeping the 80 percent who are likely not infected by relatives at home for 14 days is high. Partly in the form of compensation from the Swedish Social Insurance Agency, partly in the form of lost labor in, say, medical care, she says.
– And eight out of ten who stay at home probably do so in vain.
Another factor that few think about is the incubation time. You are not infected by what you have been infected with yourself, but by what you became ill with yourself, or perhaps a couple of days before the symptoms of the disease appear. You must be infected yourself and produce a virus in your nose to infect others, and once you have symptoms, you must stay home in any case.
Photo: LOTTE FERNVALL
Anders Tegnell.
Avoid two days of spreading the infection.
This means that, in principle, it only prevents two days of spreading the infection in almost 20 percent of those who have been infected by a sick relative, at the price that everyone is at home for 14 days, that is, the maximum two days in which you can spread the infection before you even realize you are sick. It will be quite an ineffective measure, says Agnes Wold.
– The question is whether it is an efficient use of money. I can’t decide that, says Wold.
According to Maria Rotzén, an infection control physician in the Stockholm Region, this is quarantine for adults, not children.
– We have compulsory schooling and it is not the children who are driving the spread of the infection, he tells TT.
Therefore, it uses the term relative quarantine or relative isolation.
– The idea is that the relatives are at home with the carrier or equivalent together with the patient. It will probably also happen that we will urge the family member to get tested before breaking their isolation, even if they have no symptoms, he tells TT.
So far it is unclear how long the quarantine will last. But Maria Rotzén estimates the time in a week.
– By doing this, we believe that we can at least get rid of some infection from society. We wouldn’t introduce this if we didn’t think it would add anything, Maria Rotzén tells TT.
Photo: Jessica Gow / TT / TT NEWS AGENCY
Björn Eriksson.
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