According to Magdalena Andersson, the finance minister, GDP could shrink by 10% this year and unemployment could rise to 13.5%. Sweden’s economy is still expected to be hit hard.
Meanwhile, there is no fraught debate over how to re-open society, and whether there will be a second wave, because society has largely remained open. The country more than doubled its ICU capacity to over 1,000 beds currently 550 are occupied (link in Swedish). Plenty of intensive-care beds are free, Tegnell said. “It is not a failure for the overall strategy, but it is a failure to protect our elderly who live in care homes,” Tegnell said at the briefing on April 15.īut Sweden’s healthcare system has not been overburdened, a key goal of countries that have chosen lockdowns.
While it represents a significant defeat for a country that prides itself on democratic socialism, Tegnell said the problem is due to weaknesses in the social safety net-not the coronavirus response. In Norway, which has similar social safety nets, rates have been much lower. In addition to a higher death rate (both in absolute and relative terms) compared to Denmark and Norway, Sweden has had high rates of infection and death in elderly homes, where more than half of the country’s Covid-19 deaths have occurred.
