Sweden now “has one of the lowest rates of [coronavirus] infections even though it has never adopted a rigid lockdown,” announced the Italian daily Corriere della Sera Saturday.
As many nations struggle with a resumption of the pandemic, in Stockholm the data shows the number of coronavirus infections is clearly descending, the article asserted.
“Sweden has gone from being the country with the most infections in Europe to the safest one,” Dr. Anders Tegnell, the Swedish government’s most consulted epidemiologist, said. “What we see now is that the sustainable policy might be slower in getting results, but it will get results eventually.”
“And then we also hope that the result will be more stable,” he added.
Unlike its European neighbors, Stockholm chose not to impose lockdown measures, opting instead to emphasize personal responsibility and protection of vulnerable persons. As a result, Sweden kept its schools, businesses, and restaurants open.
According to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, last week Sweden had 12 cases per million population while Denmark had 18 and Norway 14. Unlike mid-April when Sweden saw more than 100 deaths per day, today there are no more than two or three deaths. On the contrary, Copenhagen hit a record of the last 4 months on Thursday with 179 infected in 24 hours.
Some 2,500 randomly selected people in Sweden were swabbed last week, and none tested positive. At the end of April, random tests fund 0.9 percent positive and in May 0.3 percent.
“We interpret this as meaning there is not currently a widespread infection among people who do not have symptoms,” Dr. Tegnell’s deputy at the Public Health Agency of Sweden, Karin Tegmark Wisell said Thursday.
According to Johns Hopkins University, Sweden has seen 5,835 deaths with coronavirus, or 57.3 deaths per 100,000 population. In comparison, Denmark has had 10.82 deaths per 100,000, the Netherlands 36.39 per 100k, Ireland 36.61 per 100k, France 45.87 per 100k, Italy 58.77 per 100k, the UK 62.61 per 100k, Spain 62.96 per 100k, and Belgium 86.68 per 100k.
Reliable numbers on the actual number of cases and related deaths from coronavirus in China — where the virus originated — are still not available.
Last April, a report published by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) denounced China’s official coronavirus statistics as mathematically improbable and estimated the true number of infections from the epidemic in China was about 2.9 million, over a hundred times the total of 81,907 infections claimed by Beijing.
“Population size makes it almost certain that China’s disinformation about what happened outside the original outbreak city of Wuhan is worse than the disinformation about what happened inside,” the AEI report argued.