Coronavirus: Sweden keeps restaurants and bars open despite soaring death toll

More fatalities recorded in April than in any one month since January 2000

April has seen more Swedes die than in any one month for 19 years, as the coronavirus outbreak caused the death toll to surge – but the country is sticking to its decision not to impose strict lockdown measures enforced by many other countries.

Around 3,700 people have died of coronavirus in Sweden since the first reported fatality in March, figures from the Statistics Office showed on Monday. About 90 per cent of the deaths were of people over the age of 70 and living in care homes.

The country has suffered a higher death rate compared to its Scandinavian neighbours – Norway has recorded 233 deaths while 300 deaths occurred in Finland. However, Sweden has a higher population than its immediate neighbours.

In January 2000, 110.8 people died per 100,000 of the population, higher than the 101.1 people in April this year. Before that, the worst death rate was suffered in December 1993, when the toll for all deaths was 11,057 compared to 10,458 in April this year.

The Swedish government made headlines for being an outlier in Europe by keeping most restaurants, bars and schools open as the pandemic rages on. Officials leading its “low-scale” approach have argued that it is “more sustainable” in the long run and puts the responsibility not to spread the virus squarely on the shoulders of the population.

Under Sweden’s relaxed approach, most restaurants, bars, schools and other venues remained largely business as usual. Meetings of up to 50 people are permitted and dining in at cafes and restaurants is permitted as long as they space out tables and serve only seated customers.

Earlier this month, the country’s chief epidemiologist said there was little he would have done differently, apart from dong more to prevent outbreaks in Swedish care homes.

Anders Tegnell, who led Sweden’s coronavirus response, told CNBC earlier this month that the peak of infections has been passed in Stockholm and said the country’s response shows that schools can be kept open without “any major problems at all”.

He said: “We can keep our society reasonably open, without huge effects… Of course, there is huge regret over the fatalities that we’ve had but we’re not really clear how that could have been avoided. We know that these [elderly care home] settings are very vulnerable in this kind of situation and we’re not sure that doing something different would make a huge difference to that.”

When asked if Sweden would implement the same policy in the future if a pandemic were to occur again, Mr Tegnell said the country would “to a great extent, yes”.

“Now we know things that we could do better, for sure, but on the whole I think we could go down the same route,” he added.

Sweden reported a total of 30,377 positive cases of the virus on Monday, with 3,698 deaths.

Additional reporting by agencies