STOCKHOLM - Sweden is recording Europe’s highest number of coronavirus infections per head, forcing the country’s most populous region to warn that “all human contact” is a “potential risk”.
The Scandinavian nation became an object of global fascination last year when it shunned lockdown measures while the rest of the world enforced shutdowns to stem the spread of Covid-19.
It has “gradually ratcheted up its still mostly voluntary restrictions”, The Guardian says, but now has a seven-day average of 616 new infections per million people, according to Oxford University tracking.
Poland is the closest country to Sweden’s infection rate, reporting 564 new cases per week. The figure is far higher than the per-million totals in Sweden’s neighbours Finland, Denmark and Norway of 65, 113 and 119 respectively.
‘Personal lockdown’
As cases continue to rise across the country, Sweden now has “more being treated in intensive care for the virus than at its second wave peak”, The Telegraph reports.
The region centred on Uppsala, Sweden’s fourth biggest city, is now pushing people to take voluntary precautions more seriously, with “posters and an online campaign” calling on Swedes to consider “all human contacts as a potential risk”, the paper adds.
Mikael Köhler, the region’s health chief, told Sweden's TT newswire that the region is “reaching the point of the maximum capacity of what we can handle”, adding: “It seems like the British variant has taken over and there’s evidence that people are spreading the disease before they have any symptoms.”
Despite infections and ICU admissions rising rapidly, Sweden’s death toll has so far not increased. The national health agency said that this is because “many of the most vulnerable, particularly care home residents, are now vaccinated”, The Guardian reports. Oxford University tracking shows that Sweden has administered 2.12 million vaccines, meaning 20.99 per 100 people have received at least one dose.
However, the country’s death rate remains higher than its neighbours. According to Statista, Sweden has reported 1,358.51 deaths per million people over the course of the pandemic, compared with 422.64 in Denmark, 159 in Finland and 130.23 in Norway.
