Sweden, a tiny country in Northern Europe with a population of 1 crore, has always been darling of India’s left-liberal intelligentsia. An extremely rich country with per capita income of above 50,000 dollars per year and the Human Development Index of above 0.9- Sweden has almost everything that a country can aspire for. For most of the time, the country is in news in international media for good things. But this time, the country has got a fair amount of bad press due to handling of Coronavirus disease.
So far, the tiny country has registered more than 14,000 cases and 1,000 deaths. The country with 136 times smaller population and the world’s finest health infrastructure has more deaths than India and the number of cases almost equal to the country of 136 billion people.
The cases and deaths rose exponentially in Sweden, despite its favorable weather conditions- some researchers have suggested that the virus spreads less in extreme weather condition; Sweden has extremely cold weather- due to its method to deal with the pandemic. The country prioritized livelihoods over life despite high income security and huge foreign reserves and the government decided that there will be no lockdown. The schools, colleges, restaurants and almost every economic and social activity continued in Sweden as ‘normal’.
After the number of cases started growing exponentially, a group of doctors and virologists criticized the public health agency and wrote, “The approach must be changed radically and quickly,” the group wrote. “As the virus spreads, it is necessary to increase social distance. Close schools and restaurants. Everyone who works with the elderly must wear adequate protective equipment. Quarantine the whole family if one member is ill or tests positive. Elected representatives must intervene, there is no other choice.”
But the Swedish Government has not backed off so far and continued with previous no lockdown approach. The virus has spread in old-age homes where people in large numbers are dying, and still, the staff is neither using masks nor sanitizers. Magnus Bondesson, who visited his Mom a few weeks ago, told The Guardian, “They [the home] opened up for Skype calls and that’s when I saw two employees. I didn’t see any masks and they didn’t have gloves on.” And the government has not issued any guidelines for using preventive measures. “When I called again a few days later I questioned the person helping out, asking why they didn’t use face masks, and he said they were just following the guidelines,” told Bondesson to a newspaper.
Lena Einhorn, a virologist based in the country, said that the government is resisting most obvious explanation of the rising number of cases and deaths. “They have to admit that it’s a huge failure, since they have said the whole time that their main aim has been to protect the elderly,” she said. “But what is really strange is that they still do not acknowledge the likely route. They say it’s very unfortunate, that they are investigating, and that it’s a matter of the training personnel, but they will not acknowledge that presymptomatic or asymptomatic spread is a factor.”
None of the healthcare workers in old-age homes have protective medical equipments and they are. “Where I’m working we don’t have face masks at all, and we are working with the most vulnerable people of all,” said one care home worker, who wanted to remain anonymous. “We don’t have hand sanitiser, just soap. That’s it. Everybody’s concerned about it. We are all worried.”
“The worst thing is that it is us, the staff, who are taking the infection in to the elderly,” complained one nurse to Swedish public broadcaster SVT. “It’s unbelievable that more of them haven’t been infected. It’s a scandal.”
Most of the researchers and healthcare professionals have raised question over the government data of death and infected because very few people are being tested. In fact, many people who have died in the last few days have not been tested for the virus.
The Nordic country is a textbook example of- “how to not deal with Coronavirus disease”. The Swedish government has completely failed in controlling the epidemic. It prioritized money over life despite being a fairly rich country, and today the elderly are paying the price for it.
