Sweden’s idiosyncratic approach to managing the coronavirus has “failed,” according to the nation’s monarch.
“I think we have failed,” Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf said during a year-end television program. “We have a large number who have died, and that is terrible.”
Sweden’s approach to the coronavirus pandemic was characterized by a refusal to issue mandatory lockdown orders that made the Scandinavian nation an outlier from much of Europe and the globe. Stockholm underestimated the severity of the winter wave of infections.
“We got three different scenarios from the Public Health Agency this summer,” Karolinska Hospital ICU doctor Lars Falk told AFP. “We prepared for the worst, and it turned out twice as bad.”
Sweden’s top epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, orchestrated the light-touch approach to coronavirus regulations while foreseeing a manageable infection rate.
“I think we will have a relatively low, even spread during the autumn with clusters in different places,” Tegnell predicted in August.
Tegnell has emerged as a lightning rod during the coronavirus pandemic as Sweden declined to follow the United States and other European countries into the lockdowns that policymakers around the world have relied upon to slow the spread of the contagion. Swedish officials defended the policy, explaining in the spring that Swedes trust public health leaders and follow their advice voluntarily.
Yet, the virus has raced through the country in recent months, with the latest figures putting the death toll at 7,893 out of 357,466 people who tested positive. More than 45,000 of the positive coronavirus tests have been reported in the last week, and nearly 3,700 people in the country of 10 million have been hospitalized in an intensive care unit, forcing doctors in major cities to reduce their services.
“We will manage emergency care. We will manage COVID care,” Skane’s regional director Alf Jonsson told reporters this week. “But this will happen at the expense of other healthcare.”
Gustaf acknowledged his own unease about the spreading virus while condemning the government’s performance. “Lately, it has felt more obvious. It has crept closer and closer,” he said. “That’s not what you want.”
