Published: Aug. 25,
2020 at 9:53 a.m. ET By Rupert Steiner
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.
That’s the theory. It would, if carried out
perfectly, help countries manage the spread of the virus without overwhelming
hospitals with sick people, while also mitigating the full economic impact of
closing down public areas, canceling major events and introducing travel bans.
Sweden, the FT reported in early April,
initially believed a cultural quirk — that more of its elderly population lived
apart, rather than in multigenerational settings, relative to that age cohort
in other countries — would allow it to keep the aged safe from infection.
In its effort to reach herd immunity while
minimizing economic damage, Sweden, critics say, failed to protect its elderly
population, who make up the majority of those who died from COVID-19 there.
Another chink in its herd-immunity approach: Sweden only banned care-home
visits at the end of March.
“We failed to protect our elderly,” Lena
Hallengren, Sweden’s health and social-affairs minister, told Swedish Television
earlier this summer. “That’s really serious, and a failure for
society as a whole. We have to learn from this; we’re not done with this
pandemic yet.”
Sweden reported its highest death tally in 150
years in the first half of this year, the country’s official statistics office
said this month.
Public health experts and, especially,
political leaders around the world cannot seem to agree on what the right
approach is to opening up schools, scaling back lockdowns or even the wearing
of masks. Sweden reported that 86,721 people have contracted the coronavirus
since the pandemic began, according to Johns Hopkins University, Sweden’s
approach has also come at a cost, having seen 5,813 deaths from COVID-19, a
much higher toll than many of its neighbors.
Ultimately, enough people would need to be
immune to shield the most vulnerable to take a herd-immunity approach.
“With influenza, you need herd immunity of 60%
to 70%. With measles, you need about 95%. With COVID-19, it’s somewhere in the
middle,” Gregory Poland, who studies the immunogenetics of vaccine response in
adults and children at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and expert with the
Infectious Diseases Society of America, previously told MarketWatch.
In an interview with the Observer newspaper in
London this month, Tegnell, the Swedish epidemiologist, claimed that up to 30%
of the country’s population could be immune to COVID-19. “It’s very difficult
to draw a good sample from the population, because, obviously, the level of
immunity differs enormously between different age groups between different
parts of Stockholm and so on, and that’s why when we measure one group we get
4% to 5%, and when we measure another group they’re up to 25%,” he said.
In the absence of a vaccine, Mayo’s Poland
said several conditions are necessary for herd immunity to work: a very high
level of population immunity, for that immunity to be durable, and for the
virus to not mutate.
Critics say even Tegnell’s most optimistic
forecasts for Sweden are still a long way from the critical 60% to 70% goal
required for herd immunity to have a chance at working, and save the lives of
the elderly and those with underlying conditions — those most vulnerable
members of the population.
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