Sweden shifts on no-lockdown strategy

Sweden's state epidemiologist has said that he is now willing to recommend lockdown measures such as school closures, and strict limits to the size of gatherings - so long as they are only imposed locally and for three weeks at a time.

The Public Health Agency of Sweden's new approach to local restrictions, floated first at a press conference on Tuesday, marks its biggest strategic shift since it launched its no-lockdown strategy in March.

"We are thinking of fairly short restrictions, to break the spread of infection requires perhaps two to three weeks at most," Anders Tegnell told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper in an interview published on Wednesday afternoon. 

"We are still developing the concept, so to say, but something like that."

The country's new strategy comes after its infection level fell from being far-and-away the highest of any European Union country in mid-May to being one of the lowest in Europe today. The agency now hopes to keep rates low by rapidly tackling local outbreaks as they occur.

"The restrictions could be extremely local. It could be about a single workplace or city district: wherever you see a spread and think that there are restrictions that might stop it,"  Dr Tegnell told the newspaper.

The agency has so far been sceptical of issuing a general recommendation for face masks to be worn in public, but, according to Dr Tegnell, it now sees a role for them in helping control local outbreaks.

On Tuesday, Stockholm's health chief Björn Eriksson warned that the city was seeing "worrying signs of increasing infection" and said he was in talks with the Public Health Agency over bringing in local restrictions. He said these might include imposing quarantine on families where one member is infected. 

Currently, people who share a household with someone who tests positive for coronavirus are still advised to go to school and work as normal. 

Dr Tegnell said that it was important that the local restrictions were properly thought through and tailored to the area on which they were imposed.

"We have seen in Sweden that this has a tendency to hit socially vulnerable areas, and you've got to keep that in mind," he said. 

"That's why I was a bit doubtful about limiting people's movement, because you need to find restrictions which will be accepted by the group you are working with and which work in more ways than just infection control."

He pointed to Spain and The Netherlands, where local restrictions have faced resistance. "But I think this will be easier if we are extremely clear that this is only going to apply for a short period."