August 13, 2020

Andrew Campbell 

With over 15 million people infected in over 200 countries and global mortality exceeding 600,000 amid the coronavirus pandemic, a new study published revealed that Sweden’s attempt at COVID-19 herd immunity has been a failure.

Sweden adopted a light strategy for dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, decided to avoid a widespread strict lockdown, and put in place relatively few restrictions with restaurants and shops staying open. This was based on creating so-called herd immunity by letting COVID-19 sweep through the population. At first, health experts predicted that 40% of the population in the capital city Stockholm would have developed antibodies to the COVID-19 disease by May.

According to the research published August 11 in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, under herd immunity, it found that 17% of people tested in April in Stockholm in Sweden had developed antibodies to the COVID-19 disease. But, evidence in London’s serious lockdown in April and May showed that 17% of the people tested had developed antibodies to the disease.

Right now, despite strict lockdown in the UK, and the more measured Swedish response, both countries have high seven-day averaged SARS-CoV-2 death rates as shown by the research report. Furthermore, we can fully understand both the coronavirus pandemic and the impact of the measures that were taken after 1 to 2 years. At least we can then begin fairly to judge what was done correctly.