Top epidemiologist says Sweden shows no signs of herd immunity curbing coronavirus

Sweden’s leading infectious disease expert said on Tuesday the country had not seen evidence of herd immunity slowing the spread of the coronavirus in the country.

“The issue of herd immunity is a difficult one,” Swedish state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell said at a press briefing, according to Bloomberg News.

“We are not seeing any sign of immunity in the population which is currently slowing the infection,” Tegnell said.

Sweden has seen a resurgence of the virus in recent weeks, with the rate of new infections more than doubling from earlier this year.

The country has recorded about a quarter of a million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and about 6,500 deaths from the disease, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

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Supporters of the idea cited Sweden as an example, citing the country’s reluctance to implement lockdown measures that prevent public life from stopping the spread of the virus.

Tegnell however objected to those views and, in an interview last month, rebuffed the idea that Sweden had pursued a herd immunity strategy.

“In common with other countries, we are trying to slow the spread as much as possible … To imply that we are letting the disease free itself without any action to try to stop it is not true,” Tegnell told New Statesman.

“I want to be clear, no, we haven’t locked down like a lot of other countries, but we definitely had a virtual lockdown,” Tegnell said. “The Swedes have changed their behavior enormously. We have stopped traveling even more than our neighboring countries. The airports had no flights anywhere, the trains were running at a few percent of normal service, so there were huge changes in society.

Bloomberg noted that Swedes have been more exposed to the coronavirus than residents of other northern regions, and data released this week showed that one in three people tested in Stockholm tested positive for antibodies.