People at Tantolunden Park in Stockholm, Sweden, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. (AFP)
Stockholm:
Sweden should have done more to fight the coronavirus, the epidemiologist said on Wednesday behind a national strategy that avoided the strict bans seen in many other countries.
Anders Tegnell’s comments followed growing criticism of the government’s handling of the crisis and a policy that relied heavily on voluntary action, social distancing and good hygiene advice. sense, but did not prevent the spread of the virus.
Sweden has a lower COVID-19 mortality rate than European countries such as Great Britain, Spain and Italy which have imposed strict restrictions.
But, with 443 deaths per million people, it has the eighth highest number of coronavirus-related deaths per capita in the world and the highest COVID-19 death rate in Europe for parts of May, according to the group. Ourworldindata.org research.
“Yes, I think we could have done better in what we have done in Sweden, clearly,” Tegnell, chief epidemiologist at the Public Health Agency, said on Swedish radio.
“If we were to experience the same disease, knowing exactly what we know about it today, I think we would end up doing something between what Sweden has done and what the rest of the world has done,” he said. -he declares.
Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, who promised an investigation into the treatment of the pandemic, did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Minister of Health and Welfare Lena Hallengren responded.
“The government has been ready at any time to introduce new, broader measures recommended by the expert authority,” Hallengren said in a written response to Reuters.
Lofven told the Aftonbladet daily that the overall strategy to limit the disease while protecting workers and businesses was the right one.
“At the same time, we have to admit that, in terms of caring for the elderly and spreading infections, it didn’t work. It’s obvious,” he said. “Too many old people have died here.”
Most European countries have closed schools, shops and businesses, which has shut down much of society. Sweden closed care homes for visitors in late March, but almost half of coronavirus-related deaths have occurred in elderly people living in care facilities.
“CATASTROPHIC”
Recent antibody tests have also indicated that the number of people infected in Sweden is lower than in Public Health Agency models and that so-called herd immunity may be more distant than expected.
Tegnell said it was unclear what measures taken elsewhere could have been most effective in Sweden.
“Perhaps we will know by now that people have started to remove the measures, one by one,” he said. “And then we may get information about what, in addition to what we have done, we could do without adopting a total lockdown.”
The government has been criticized for failing to reach the target of 100,000 tests per week, reaching only a third of that of last week.
Bjorn Olsen, professor of infectious medicine at Uppsala University, said that Sweden’s strategy had been catastrophic.
“This is one of the biggest embarrassments and most tragic events in Sweden, (in) all categories,” he said, calling for a change of course to start testing and perform more contact searches. “As long as people die, we have to try to change.”
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
