Sweden continues independent approach to coronavirus

Sweden has remained apart from the general global trend throughout the novel coronavirus pandemic with its light-touch approach towards regulations around COVID-19, and is now pursuing a different path from its neighbors over the issue of mask wearing.

Last week Finland changed policy and urged people to wear them in public, Denmark will make them compulsory on public transport from next weekend, and in Norway, they are recommended on rush-hour public transport, but Sweden continues to stand alone.

"It is very dangerous to believe face masks would change the game when it comes to COVID-19," the country's state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell told the Financial Times.

"Face masks can be a complement to other things when other things are safely in place. But to start with having face masks and then think you can crowd your buses or your shopping malls, that's definitely a mistake."

Unlike Denmark, Finland and Norway, Sweden has a male prime minister, Stefan Lofven, and a recent study across 194 countries by researchers at the British universities of Liverpool and Reading shows that female-led countries have been more effective at dealing with the pandemic.

"Our results clearly indicate that women leaders reacted more quickly and decisively in the face of potential fatalities", said Supriya Garikipati, one of the research authors.

"While this may have longer-term economic implications, it has certainly helped these countries to save lives, as evidenced by the significantly lower number of deaths in these countries."

According to recent figures from the European Union's European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Denmark has had 621 deaths from more than 15,000 cases, Finland has had 334 deaths from almost 8,000 cases, Norway has had 262 deaths from just more than 10,000 and Sweden has 5,790 deaths from more than 85,000 cases, although this figure is still well below that of countries such as Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.

One reason for Swedish reluctance to wear masks is high levels of trust in the authorities in a country known for its relatively low crime rates, and a natural tendency towards socially-distant behavior which has been relied upon, rather than imposed by the authorities.

"When the Swedish health agency says there's no reason to wear face masks, people don't wear face masks," said Jonas Ludvigsson from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. "In other countries, where there's less trust and they don't recommend wearing masks, people might do it anyway."

However, although many Swedes have been happy to go along with Tegnell's advice, the country's care home sector has been particularly badly hit, and data obtained by Swedish journalists under freedom of information laws show that early in the pandemic, he discussed the possibility of using herd immunity as a tactic.

An exchange of messages with his counterpart in Finland, Mika Salminen, discussed the closure of schools, and suggested that this would reduce the spread of the virus among older people by around 10 percent. "10 percent might be worth it?" was Tegnell's reply.