The crisis in Sweden’s care homes

Sweden’s refusal to embrace lockdown measures used elsewhere to deal with the threat of coronavirus hasn’t led to the steep spike in deaths and intensive care patients that some feared. Our death toll is, at the time of writing, close to 2,020 – and the rate of infections is slowly declining. The number of patients in intensive care has flatlined and the number of new patients in critical care has gone down sharply in the past week. If this development continues, Sweden will end up very far away from frightening estimates suggesting 80-90,000 people could die before the summer. The situation at our hospitals will be stressed, but under control. Sweden will then exit the pandemic with a tolerable death toll. Unlike other countries, it will have managed the pandemic without harming civil liberties and wrecking our economy.

However Sweden and its authorities do deserve some criticism. And the verdict is already clear on one major part of our policy: the failure to protect elderly people living in nursing homes.