After 6 months without lockdown, Sweden's COVID-19 deaths, infections bottom out
After months without lockdowns, school closures and other mitigation measures widely imposed across the world, Sweden's coronavirus cases and deaths have fallen to such minimal levels as to revive the debate over its so-called herd immunity strategy.
Some Swedish officials are far from declaring victory, warning there could be a second wave and that too many elderly died in the country during its comparatively lax pandemic restrictions. The country's population-adjusted death rate, meanwhile, is in the top 10 worldwide, but lower than the rates for Italy, Spain and even New York, where heavy lockdowns prevailed.
And the dramatic drop in new cases and deaths in that country point to a rapidly improving situation there in defiance of many earlier predictions.
The Swedish government has engaged in minimal interventions and imposed relatively few restrictions upon its citizenry for the duration of the pandemic. Yet the so-called "Swedish model" has for months drawn alarm and derision from countless world health authorities. Many have insisted that sweeping, open-ended restrictions on social and economic activity — including lockdowns, strict "social distancing" measures, and mandatory face mask orders — are the only practical methods by which the coronavirus can be halted.
Though there is relatively little evidence to support such measures, many governments — particularly those in Western Europe and the United States — have for several months imposed such orders on their respective citizens, with numerous European heads of state and U.S. governors indicating that these measures may remain in place until an effective vaccine is developed, a process that could take years, if ever, to come to fruition.
Heavy mitigation has no 'historical scientific basis'
Sweden largely eschewed such policies. Throughout March, as much of the Western world was shutting down large swaths of its economies and strictly limiting individual mobility with stay-at-home orders, Sweden opted for a much lighter touch, refusing to close down service industries, leaving schools largely open, and allowing its borders to remain open. It did restrict large gatherings for a time, while some schools were closed.
According to the World Health Organization, Sweden's daily deaths peaked in late April at 185 and have been declining ever since; on some recent days, the country has recorded as few as nine deaths. Daily new cases were in the low-to-mid-hundreds for most of July, and a few days no new cases were recorded at all.
Anders Tegnell, the country's chief epidemiologist and for months now the public face of the Swedish model, has been openly dismissive of the far-reaching mitigation measures undertaken by so many other countries.
"Closedown, lockdown, closing borders — nothing has a historical scientific basis, in my view," Tegnell said in April. "We have looked at a number of European Union countries to see whether they have published any analysis of the effects of these measures before they were started, and we saw almost none."
"Closing borders, in my opinion, is ridiculous, because COVID-19 is in every European country now," Tegnell said at the time, adding: "Nowhere in Europe has been able to slow down the spread considerably."
Swedish death rate is among highest in the world, but lower than some lockdown countries
The country has been the subject of withering criticism since March. In July, the New York Times said that the country was a "cautionary tale" for the world. The National Post in June said the Swedish model "failed" and that the country "took the pain, but realized no gain." In May, Wired stated that the country's epidemiological experiment "well and truly failed."
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