Albert believes that Sweden's healthcare system is coping, as does Peter Lindgren, managing director at the
Swedish Institute for Health Economics (IHE). Lindgren told CNN that the number of people treated in intensive care units over several weeks had been stable, "so in that aspect it has to be successful."
But he added: "What it failed at, I think, is that there has been disease transmitted into elderly care facilities. We have deaths occurring as a consequence of that."
Hallengren, the Swedish health minister, told CNN: "One of the main concerns now in Sweden is to strengthen the protection for those living in care homes for older people."
She said it was still "far too early to draw any firm conclusions as to the effectiveness of the measures taken in Sweden."
Cars at a traffic control post in Hyvinkaa, Finland, on April 15, during the lockdown of Uusimaa, the nation's most populous region.
She said that just because Sweden did not have a "full lockdown" did not mean "that it's business as usual" and that measure were being "continuously reassessed" with the help of experts "to ensure that the right measures are taken at the right time."
Gatherings of more than 50 people are banned and people are "strongly recommended" to avoid non-essential domestic travel, she added.
Sweden's
foreign minister on Monday told UK newspaper The Guardian that it was far too soon to judge her country's approach to Covid-19.
"There's been a lot of misunderstanding," Ann Linde said. "We have pretty much the same goals as every other government ... And as we have always said, we are perfectly ready to go with more binding regulations if the population does not follow."
She said the fairly high death toll was "certainly not part of the plan" and said the high number of care home deaths was "one area where we have failed."
The
Swedish Public Health Agency this week forecast that almost a third of people in Stockholm would have been infected by Covid-19 by May 1. That would be more than
200,000 people -- far higher than the number of cases recorded nationally so far.
Less than 24 hours later, there was confusion when the health agency announced on
Twitter that it had "detected errors" in the report, but it then said its mathematical model had been
updated and reiterated that 26% of the Stockholm population would have been infected by May 1.
It said that there were approximately 75 unconfirmed cases for each reported case of Covid-19 -- but that the peak of the spread of infection had passed.
Sweden's state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell said on Friday that his country would likely be in a better place to withstand a second wave of coronavirus because so many people in Sweden have now been exposed to the virus.
He told the BBC that the relatively relaxed approach had "worked in some aspects," since there had always been at least 20% of intensive care beds empty and able to take care of Covid-19 patients.
"We believe we passed the peak of the transmission a week ago," he added.
Asked whether Sweden's approach will help it withstand a possible second wave, Tegnell said he believed it would. "It will definitely affect the reproduction rate and slow down the spread," he said, but added that it wouldn't be enough to achieve "herd immunity."
"We know very little about the immunity of this disease, but most of the experts in Sweden agree that some kind of immunity we definitely will have because a lot of people that have been tested so far have produced antibodies ... We hope this will make it easier for us in the long run."
Asked whether the death toll would have been lower if Sweden had followed the same path as other European countries in introducing strict restrictions, Tegnell replied: "That's a very difficult question to answer at this stage. At least 50% of our death toll is within the elderly homes and we have a hard time understanding how a lockdown would stop the introduction of the disease into the elderly homes."
Whether Sweden's Covid-19 strategy has succeeded or failed may not be clear for months to come, but as countries across the globe count their dead and wonder whether they could have done more to halt the spread of the virus, the world will be watching.
