Sweden is currently experiencing the smallest wave of Omicron Covid infections of any of its Scandinavian neighbours. At a rolling average of under 500 cases per million, it is less than Norway (700), Finland (1100) and Denmark (3000). Daily Covid deaths are under 0.5 per million — half that of Norway and a third of Finland or Denmark.
In an interview today with Svenska Dagbladet, Professor Lone Simonsen of Rosklide University in Denmark said it is not yet clear what explains the difference:
The Danish wave has been the most dramatic so far, but health chiefs there are expressing confidence that the milder nature of the Omicron variant will mean that normal life can resume shortly.
Tyra Grove Krause, Chief Epidemiologist at the national disease centre “SSI”, told Danish TV2 that the risk of ending up in hospital is half that of previous variants, and that the peak would come later in January.
Lone Simonsen agrees that Denmark will soon be through the worst and that many Danes will not even know they are infected. She is confident that there will not be significant excess mortality:
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