Coronavirus infection rate in London similar to Stockholm – despite Sweden’s lockdown snub, study suggests

The same proportion of people in London were infected with coronavirus in April as in Stockholm — where authorities opted for a herd immunity strategy, according to a new study.

Antibody testing regimes from both the UK and Swedish governments suggested that 17 per cent of the population in both cities had contracted Covid-19 in April, the paper published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine highlights.

The authors stated that the UK — where Boris Johnson admitted one main point of debate was whether to “take it on the chin” — had been “tardy” in imposing a lockdown.

The paper titled “Four months into the Covid-19 pandemic, Sweden’s prized herd immunity is nowhere in sight”, noted it was “striking” how few differences there were in the preventative measures taken by countries across the world in the four months after the World Health Organisation declared the outbreak a pandemic on 11 March.

“However, only two advanced countries — Sweden and the UK — have seriously considered a softer general approach to this challenge, namely to shield the more vulnerable while accepting some viral infection continuing to spread among the less vulnerable majority,” wrote authors David Goldsmith and Eric J W Orlowski.

Despite the eventually stringent restrictions imposed in Britain, and the “more measured Swedish response”, both countries have high seven-day averaged death rates compared with the rest of Europe, the paper stated.

The UK’s official death toll, which counts only those who tested positive, sits higher than any other European nation at 46,526. Sweden has suffered 5,770 fatalities, according to government figures. Respectively, they have the second and fifth-highest rates of deaths per population in the European Economic Area, according to Statista.

In Britain, the government has faced criticism over what many perceive to be a fatal reticence to impose lockdown, and for decisions that led to ministers abandoning the strategy to contact trace all infected individuals in mid-March.

The authors acknowledged that “many advanced healthcare economies — certainly the UK, less so Germany — lost their best chance of controlling national epidemics close to their onset due to a toxic melange” of low pandemic preparedness and having “inadequate” resources to carry out effective contact tracing.

But the main focus of the commentary was Sweden, where officials wrongly projected that 40 per cent of Stockolm’s residents would have been infected by May, ignoring advice from countless health experts to impose a lockdown.

Primary and secondary schools, restaurants, cafes and shops remained open and gatherings of up to 50 people were still allowed, while officials left it up to individuals whether or not to socially distance or work from home, drawing on the Swedish concept of folkvett, representing the common sense of the people as a collective.

But in June, after denouncing lockdowns and criticising European border closures as “ridiculous” and “counterproductive”, Sweden’s state epidemiologist Andre Tegnell said: “If we would encounter the same disease, with exactly what we know about it today, I think we would land midway between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world did.”

Sweden had “continued persistence of higher infection and mortality (as one is inexorably linked to the other) well beyond the few critical weeks period seen in Denmark, Finland and Norway, whose rapid lockdown measures seem to have been initially more successful in curtailing the infection surge”, the authors wrote.

Despite their critical observations, the authors concluded: “There is neither justification for schadenfreude, nor for Swedes to feel unduly sheepish about their folkvett.

“Lest this strategy seem like just the traditional risky Swedish exceptionalism, we in the UK would do well to remember we nearly trod the same path.

“Right now, despite ‘strict (but tardy) lockdown’ in the UK, and the more measured Swedish response, both countries have high seven-day averaged SARS-CoV-2 death rates when compared to other Scandinavian and European countries.

“Only once we can fully understand both the pandemic and the impact of the measures that were taken – after 1-2 years at least – can we then begin fairly to judge what was done correctly.”

Additional reporting by PA