Mick Hartley

The latest from the land of the relaxed lockdown:

Sweden has registered its lowest rate of positive coronavirus tests yet even after its testing regime was expanded to record levels in what one health official said was a vindication of its relatively non-intrusive Covid-19 strategy.

Over the past week the country carried out more than 120,000 tests, of which only 1.3 per cent identified the disease. At the height of the pandemic the proportion was 19 per cent.

Johan Carlson, an epidemiologist and director of the public health agency, said that Swedes seemed to be benefiting from widespread immunity because of the decision not to order the population to stay at home during the first wave.

“Our strategy was consistent and sustainable,” Professor Carlson said. “We probably have a lower risk of [the virus] spreading than other countries.”

In another striking illustration of the progress Sweden has made it is now recording fewer new cases per capita than Norway, which introduced one of Europe’s earliest lockdowns, for the first time since April.

In Denmark, another Nordic country that initially seemed to have curbed Covid-19 through the imposition of tight restrictions, the infection rate has also risen much higher than the rate in Sweden.

Denmark and Norway have also largely reopened their borders to Swedes, although some quarantine measures have been put back in place as coronavirus has flared up again in Norway.

At the start of the pandemic the authorities in Stockholm reasoned that the disease would be a long-term challenge and that it would be better to allow the population to develop immunity to it while trying to protect those most at risk.

The government advised people to work from home where they could but left most of the country open, including bars, restaurants and schools for all except the oldest pupils.

It also declined to recommend the use of masks in shops or on trains and buses, although it requires people to keep at least 1.5m apart in public.

In the early months many critics argued that this approach was recklessly laissez-faire.

Some scientists predicted that as many as 180,000 people could die in a country of 10.2 million.

Those estimates proved to be drastically overblown: up to now there have been 5,838 Covid-19 deaths. In per capita terms this is the fifth highest death rate in Europe, behind only Belgium, the UK, Spain and Italy, but it has also fallen substantially since the summer. Only seven people died with the disease in the past week.