Suècia no es fa el suec amb l’estratègia amb el covid-19

In the coming weeks, our daily special coverage newsletter will be dedicated to bringing you the latest updates from Europe on the coronavirus outbreak.

Sweden: the backlash

Sweden has announced a series of measures to ease restrictions over the coming weeks. From Saturday, people without symptoms can travel freely within the country. On Sunday, elite sports will return but without spectators, and next Monday, universities and upper secondary schools may reopen.

But hold on a second! I thought Sweden hadn’t gone into lockdown?

As we have explored here before, the country certainly didn’t impose a full lockdown, though substantial measures were taken. But was it enough? For months now a debate has raged elsewhere, while in Sweden a tentative consensus seemed to exist that the right decisions were being taken at the right time.

That fragile acceptance of the government and its scientists, however, seems to be fracturing. Yesterday, at the first party leaders’ parliamentary debate since the pandemic began, opposition politicians went after Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, saying Sweden’s high death rate represented serious failures.

The country’s death rate per million remains below some of Europe’s hardest hit nations, like the United Kingdom and Spain, but it is ten times that of Norway and eight times that of Finland.

Criticism has come from opposition quarters about testing and the lack of protective gear for care homes, which have been particularly badly hit by the virus. Meanwhile, a survey by pollster Novus showed support among the public is waning. The number of respondents who said they had “very or quite high confidence” in the government’s ability to handle the coronavirus plummeted to 45 per cent in June from 63 per cent in April.

And questions are being asked of the state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell. Recently, he admitted that too many people had died. “If we would encounter the same disease, with exactly what we know about it today, I think we would land midway between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world did,” he said during an interview with Sveriges Radio last week.

Yesterday, Sweden’s public health agency conceded that around one million people, a tenth of the country's population, had travelled abroad in late February and early March, meaning hundreds of different people may have brought the virus back to the Nordic country.

It is difficult not to conclude that Sweden’s handling of the crisis has damaged its reputation abroad. Just yesterday, Slovakia, in announcing its border reopening, excluded Sweden and many others have done likewise. It is also possible that public trust in government, science and institutions will take a significant hit.

This narrative is not simply confined to Sweden. A senior scientist in the UK yesterday claimed that the death toll there could have been half the nearly 50,000 recorded so far if the country had locked down only a week earlier. The government in Spain under Pedro Sánchez has been beset by infighting and opposition since mid-April over the decisions his precarious administration has taken. And in Italy, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has confirmed he will give evidence on Friday to an inquiry on why an early lockdown was not imposed in the Bergamo area, the epicentre of the country’s pandemic.

Sweden is still hoping that, despite the mistakes made in the past few months, ultimately it has still taken the right course. That the country is learning lessons and has seen higher rates of infection should mean that, in any second wave, it will be better protected than its neighbours.

As the virus continues to spread, and infections continue to creep up and claim more lives, it will be years, not weeks or months, before any judgement can be made on who got it right.

Darren McCaffrey
Euronews Political Editor
@DarrenEuronews