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Sweden’s king has said that the country’s anti-lockdown coronavirus strategy has failed as hospitals in the Stockholm region warned they were struggling to cope with a surge in cases and polls showed public confidence the authorities had plummeted to a new low.
“The people of Sweden have suffered tremendously under difficult conditions,” King Carlos XVI Gustavo told state broadcaster SVT in a year-end interview. “I think we have failed. We have a large number of people who have died and that is terrible. “
The rare royal reprimand came after the two main Swedish regions of Stockholm and Skåne announced that they had been forced to postpone non-emergency operations as the country’s healthcare sector struggles to cope with a second wave of infections.
“We will manage emergency care, we will manage Covid care,” Skåne Regional Health Director Alf Jönsson said on Wednesday. “But this will happen at the expense of other health services.” More than 25% of the Covid-19 tests were positive, he said.
Stockholm’s regional health director said all non-emergency care will be postponed until at least January 31. “My duty now is to do everything possible to relieve and help the care staff,” said Björn Eriksson. “They have to go on for weeks, months.”
An Ipsos poll for the daily Dagens Nyheter on Thursday showed that public support for Anders Tegnell, the country’s leading epidemiologist and architect of its lean strategy, had dropped 13 points to 59%, with confidence in the Public Health Agency of the 68% to 59%. 52%. Confidence in the authorities overall plummeted to a record low of 34%.
Tegnell insisted in a television interview that it was too early to say whether Sweden’s strategy had failed. “Virtually every country is struggling with this,” he told TV4, adding that he was surprised by the scale of the second wave and admitted that the situation was “starting to approach breaking point” in some areas.
Total Covid-associated deaths in Sweden, which has avoided strict mandatory shutdowns in favor of largely voluntary measures, reached 7,802 on Wednesday, with more than 500 in the last week and more than 1,800 since early November.
Its toll per million of 766.2 is about 10 times higher than neighboring Norway and Finland and almost five times that of Denmark, but lower than some European countries that imposed blockades such as France, Italy, Spain and Great Britain.
Until now, the country’s approach has been based primarily on the responsibility of citizens to observe hygiene and distancing recommendations, with shops, bars and restaurants remaining open during the pandemic and masks are not recommended outside of hospitals.
However, when the second wave arrived, the Public Health Agency and the government issued stricter rules, banning the sale of alcohol after 10 p.m., reducing public gatherings from 50 to eight people, and shifting high schools to teaching. online.
People have also been told to avoid public transportation and crowded stores, to limit social interactions to single households or people already in regular contact, and not to go to the gym, library, shopping malls, or other public places.
