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When COVID-19 became a worldwide pandemic, it was interesting to see how different countries developed varying strategies to contain and manage the outbreak.

In the first few months, experts were still struggling to get a handle on things, with each country taking action in its own way with the mind to keep economies from failing, while trying to save lives.

Sweden decided to opt against lockdown early on, claiming that its primary focus would be sustaining the economy and allowing herd immunity to develop.

That approach has come in for criticism at various times.

Skip ahead to recent news, and Sweden’s public health agency is working with regions battling the worst COVID-19 outbreaks, by toughening its approach in an attempt to ward off a resurgence of infections, The Telegraph reports.

New rules will come into effect today, in virus hotspots, which will allow regional health authorities to give citizens the order to avoid shopping centres, museums, libraries, swimming pools, gyms, sports training, sports matches, public transport, and concerts.

Visiting the elderly and other at-risk groups will be strongly discouraged.

“It’s more of a lockdown situation – but a local lockdown,” said Johan Nojd, who leads the infectious diseases department in Uppsala.

Dr Anders Tegnell, who is working with Nojd on the new plan, says:

“Perhaps tomorrow we will have several talking about concerts or restaurants and then perhaps one could say, ‘in Uppsala now for two or three weeks it is the Public Health Agency’s advice not to sit in restaurants late at night’.”

Bitte Brastad, a chief legal officer at the agency, says that the new strategy falls somewhere “between regulations and recommendations”.

The number of new cases in Sweden has been climbing since the start of September, with a seven-day average of 65 per million people per day reported to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control on Friday, compared to 71, 40 and 25 cases per million in Denmark, Finland and Norway respectively.

Tegnell says that the recent resurgence in infections had changed his agency’s understanding of how the virus is spreading.

“I think the obvious conclusion is that the level of immunity in those cities is not at all as high as we have, as maybe some people, have believed,” he said.

“I think what we are seeing is very much a consequence of the very heterogeneous spread that this disease has, which means that even if you feel like there have been a lot of cases in some big cities, there are still huge pockets of people who have not been affected yet.”

Sweden is still claiming that immunity could be “a little bit on our side”, but as we know from recent studies, scientists are still uncertain as to whether or not immunity is longterm in people who have had COVID-19.

[source:telegraph]