Leading Swedish health experts claim the country has a falling coronavirus infection rate because it was one of the few that didn’t go into lockdown and has rejected the need for masks, while critics point to the country’s relatively high rate of death per 100,000 population.
Arne Elofsson, a professor in biometrics at Stockholm University, thinks the population has developed a form of immunity: “Strict rules do not work as people seem to break them. Sweden is doing fine.”
Anders Tegnell, an epidemiologist involved in managing Sweden’s pandemic response (the Financial Times called him its architect), thinks masks give a false sense of security: “The belief that masks can solve our problem is very dangerous.”
Prime Minister Stefan Löfven thinks voluntary social-distancing rules and not closing schools but banning gatherings of more than 50 people has been the right approach: “Now there are quite a few people who think we were right,” he told a newspaper. “The strategy that we adopted, I believe is right — to protect individuals, limit the spread of the infection.”
Data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control show Sweden has a fortnightly infection rate of 37 cases per 100,000 people. This is much lower than France, with 60 cases per 100,000 and Spain at 152.7 cases per 100,000.
However, Sweden has an overall COVID-related death rate of 57.08 per 100,000, which is the ninth highest in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University.
What’s more, Sweden, which has a population of just over 10 million, has had a fatality rate of 6.8%; that’s lower than those of Belgium, the U.K., Italy and Spain, but higher than the fatality rates of Brazil, the U.S., Mexico, France and Ireland.
The U.K. considered a herd-immunity approach in the early stages of the pandemic but ultimately decided against it and opted for a lockdown instead.
Supporters of Sweden’s strategy say it’s better to allow immunity to build up among members of the population who are least at risk of dying from COVID-19, thereby reducing the rate of transmission and protecting those who are most at risk of dying from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.