the Swedish policy of “soft response” to the pandemic continues to remain a debatable question. According to the former state epidemiologist in this country, Sweden was “not right”, rejecting the more stringent restrictive measures.
Former state epidemiologist Annika Linde of Sweden has broken his silence about the controversial strategy of the country against mers, says The Guardian.
Annika Linde said that now she believes that the authorities had to impose stricter restrictions at the early stages of the pandemic to take control of the coronavirus.
Watching the reaction of Sweden to the swine flu and SARS as a state epidemiologist from 2005 to 2013 Annika Linde still supported used under the guidance of her successor Anders Tegnell approach to countering the COVID-19.
But now she has become the first senior officer of public health, who said that she changed her mind because of the relatively high number of deaths from the coronavirus in Sweden compared to neighboring Nordic countries – Denmark, Norway and Finland.
“I think we needed more time to prepare. If we closed very early, ‘ said Linda the edition of the Observer, we would have been able during this time to make sure we have everything we need to protect vulnerable patients.”
for two days last week in Sweden recorded the highest mortality per capita in the world in a seven-day moving average and it is expected that the total number of deaths maybe this weekend exceed 4,000 people.
mortality rates per capita in Denmark, Finland and Norway that have imposed more stringent restrictive measures, now, respectively, four, seven and nine times lower than in Sweden.
In Sweden, embarked on a strategy with the least amount of restrictions than in any developed country. Were left open in middle schools, bars, restaurants, shopping centers and gyms, allowed the collection of up to 50 people. The focus of the government decided to make social responsibility and common sense of the Swedes.
Annika Linde says that at first she shared the ideas underlying the Swedish approach. “I think the main perception was that sooner or later, no matter what you do, you infect the entire population,” she said.
“So when Anders Tegnell said: “We smooth out the curve and protecting the vulnerable”, I thought after a while we reach herd immunity. This can be a good strategy.” I was not so critical of”.
Since then, many countries have demonstrated that it is possible to significantly reduce the incidence of coronavirus infection and the ot��be under the control of the pandemic, at least temporarily.
At the same time, the second part of the Swedish strategy to protect the elderly and other risk groups – had failed.
“It was like a dream that we can protect the elderly, having really very little reason,” said Linda, which at the age of 72 years had to spend over two months in semi-isolation.
Politicians, the media and the public in Sweden still largely support the activities of the public health Agency to combat the pandemic, with the exception of a small group of scientists and researchers.
Anders Tegnell for its part, acknowledged that the country is in “a terrible situation”, but rejects the idea that isolation could help: “we often take such criticism and say: “If we closed, we had to do much more.” But when I ask the question: “And what we could have done that would have changed so much?”, they don’t get too many answers.”
Annika Linde believes that Tegnell was wrong, laying the blame for the high infection rate in Swedish nursing homes to local authorities and private companies who run them.
She explained the failure of the approach of Sweden is partly the unwillingness of the public health Agency to adapt a pre-prepared strategy, based on the experience of flu pandemics such as Spanish flu and swine flu, to the coronavirus.
“the fact that it was compared too much with epidemics of influenza, initially, could cause us to make wrong assumptions,” said she. “Maybe we could be more development if we were more aware of the risk of spread from asymptomatic people.”
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