8 | New Scientist | 22 August 2020
SWEDEN was one of the few
European countries not to
impose a compulsory coronavirus
lockdown. Its strategy for tackling
the outbreak has been hailed as a
success by some and condemned
as a failure by others. Which is it?
While it is sometimes implied
that Sweden didn’t have a
lockdown, it did. It was just
largely voluntary, with only
a few legal measures such as
a ban on gatherings of more
than 50 people. “Voluntary
restrictions work as well as
legal ones,” says the architect
of Sweden’s strategy, chief
epidemiologist Anders Tegnell.
This appears to be true, in
Sweden at least. The measures
did work nearly as well in getting
people to change their behaviour.
Adam Sheridan at the University
of Copenhagen in Denmark,
for instance, has used data from
a bank to compare spending
patterns up to April in Sweden and
Denmark. Denmark introduced
a compulsory lockdown on
11 March, one of the first in Europe.
Sheridan found that spending,
which is an indicator of behaviour
as well as economic activity,
fell by nearly as much in Sweden
as in Denmark: 25 per cent
compared with 29 per cent.
Similarly, data from the
Citymapper phone app, which
helps people plan their routes,
suggests that travel in Stockholm
fell to 40 per cent of the normal
level. “That’s a substantial
reduction,” says Martin McKee
at the London School of Hygiene
& Tropical Medicine, whose team
did the analysis. But there were
even bigger falls in other major
European cities with compulsory
lockdowns, to around 20 per cent.
So there was a substantial
voluntary lockdown in Sweden,
yet it wasn’t as effective in
reducing the spread of thecoronavirus as the compulsory
lockdowns in neighbouring
Denmark and Norway. Cases
and deaths rose faster in Sweden,
and have been slower to decline.
Sweden has about 8340
confirmed cases per million
people as of 17 August, compared
with 1815 in Norway and 2695 in
Denmark. (For the UK, it is 4690
and 16,320 for the US.) Sweden has
had 57 deaths per 100,000 people,
compared with five in Norway
and 11 in Denmark. (For the UK,
it is 61, and for the US it is 51.)Sheridan’s analysis suggests
young people – whose spending
makes little contribution to the
overall economy – were least likely
to change their behaviour and
might have undermined the
voluntary lockdown. Among
people aged between 18 and 29,
spending dropped far less in
Sweden than in Denmark.Tegnell, meanwhile, says the
high death rate in Sweden was
related to the failure to prevent
infections in care homes. Matters
have now been improved, he says.
Half of Sweden’s deaths were in
care homes up to mid-May.
What about the economy?
“This has never been done to
save the economy. It’s been
done to save public health,”
says Tegnell. That means public
health in a broad sense, he adds,
not just the coronavirus.
That said, Sheridan’s spending
comparison suggests that the
economic impact was only slightly
reduced by not imposing a more
effective compulsory lockdown.
What’s more, recent data
released by another bank
indicates that spending in
Denmark has recovered faster
than in Sweden, says Sheridan.
Others have claimed that
Sweden suffered less of an
economic decline on the basis
of initial estimates of GDP for
the second quarter of 2020.
Sweden’s fell by 8.6 per cent,
less than the estimated averageof 11.9 per cent for the European
Union (EU) as a whole.
However, those making
such claims fail to point out that
several countries that did impose
compulsory lockdowns did as
well or better. GDP fell by 8.4 per
cent in the Czech Republic, for
instance, and by just 5.1 per cent
in Lithuania, the lowest in the EU.
What all the researchers
agree on is that it isn’t over yet.
There might be second waves
in Denmark and Norway that
Sweden avoids because so many
people there have already been
infected, although it is too soon
to compare figures.
Achieving herd immunity
(see page 10) was one of Tegnell’s
aims, but antibody surveys
suggest that only about 20 per
cent of people in Stockholm have
been infected, similar to levels in
London and New York. That is far
short of the roughly 70 per cent
level estimated to be needed. ❚“The economic impact was
only slightly reduced by not
imposing a more effective
compulsory lockdown”Lockdown strategyAA
RON^ GED
DES^ PHOTOGRAP
HY
/GETT
Y^ IMAGESSweden’s virus response analysed
The Scandinavian country avoided compulsory lockdowns as the coronavirus spread.
It isn’t clear if this was a wise choice, says Michael Le PageSweden’s capital
Stockholm had a
voluntary lockdownNews Coronavirus