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Sweden’s soft restraints strategy should set a model for other countries, the organization says.
The World Health Organization has set Sweden’s strategy for tackling the coronavirus pandemic as an example for other countries in the long term.
With the onset of the pandemic, the Swedish authorities decided not to impose strict quarantine measures, which generated criticism from around the world, including the WHO itself. They then said that the Swedes “sacrificed the elderly” for the good of the economy.
Mortality in Sweden in the first half of the year broke a 150-year record, but the economy still showed the strongest contraction in the last 40 years. Correspondent.net says the details.
What to learn from Sweden
Sweden’s strategy to introduce soft restrictions as part of the fight against the coronavirus pandemic should set a model for other countries in the long term, said WHO Special Envoy Dr. David Nabarro in an interview with the radio station. Magic from New Zealand.
The key to defeating COVID-19 is trust between authorities and the public, he said. In Sweden, Nabarro says, “the government could trust the public and the public could trust the government.”
The strict quarantine serves as a “crude tool” that seriously affects the income of citizens and small businesses, emphasized the special envoy of the organization.
At the same time, Nabarro believes that societies as a whole should come out of quarantine only when the situation is already under control and there is a system in place to limit new outbreaks of infection.
“Still, it may sometimes be necessary to restrict citizens’ freedom of movement for short periods,” he says.
Initially, the WHO believed that Sweden was making a big mistake by not introducing the quarantine. Anders Tegnell, the country’s leading epidemiologist, also recognized it in early June. This approach led to too many deaths, he said, saying the country should have imposed stricter restrictions.
Tegnell noted that it would be more correct to average the approach “between what Sweden did and what other countries did.”
Self-isolation in Sweden was a recommendation, not an obligation. As restrictive measures, only the ban on mass events, the ban on visiting nursing homes and the transfer of students to distance education were adopted.
At the same time, the Swedes were neither required nor required to wear masks in public places, and if they traveled to places where a pandemic outbreak was recorded, they were not forced to quarantine for 14 days upon arrival.
Initially, the Swedes wanted the population to develop herd immunity. For this, according to scientists, it is necessary that about 60 percent of the population has been sick. In Sweden, it was said that two-thirds of the population would be infected without quarantine, but in Stockholm, for example, only 20 percent would become ill.
According to the WHO, as of September 1, 84.3 thousand people had been diagnosed with coronavirus in Sweden, more than 5.8 thousand died.
In terms of mortality, the country has outperformed both its closest neighbors and countries with large numbers of infected. According to the Worldometer portal, Sweden is among the top ten countries in the world with the highest number of deaths from COVID-19 per million inhabitants.
Wave 2.0. Ukraine and the EU strengthen quarantine
The Swedish model was also chosen by Britain, but changed her mind after two weeks and introduced a very strict quarantine. Despite this, the UK has one of the highest morbidity and mortality rates.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko also decided to develop herd immunity. His attitude towards the coronavirus, experts say, was one of the reasons for the massive protests in Belarus.
According to preliminary data from the Swedish statistical office SCB, in the second quarter of 2020, Sweden’s GDP decreased by 8.6 percent compared to the previous quarter. On the other hand, compared to the second quarter of 2019, the Swedish economy contracted by 8.2 percent.
This is the most severe recession in 40 years, but the Swedish economy has lost half during the pandemic compared to the rest of Europe, where residents were subject to strict quarantine, writes Trading Economics.
So, according to the statistics department of European states, on average in EU countries, GDP sank by 15 percent. In the United States, the situation is even worse: GDP fell 33 percent.
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