125 new #covid19sverige deaths reported this week and 35302 new confirmed infections for the 7 days until Thursday, decreases of about 7.5% compared to the previous 7-day period.
Total deaths now 14048.
Adjusting for date of death and reporting lag, deaths are at about 20/day.
By comparison, that's almost 3 times as many deaths as our Nordic neighbours reported in the past week - combined.
And about 4 times as many confirmed cases - combined.
While Sweden has dropped just below 500 cases/million/day, we continue to be one of the worst hit countries in the world. Out of countries with more than 1 million population, currently only Bahrain (pop 1.4 mill) and Uruguay (pop 3.5 mill) are doing worse per capita than Sweden.
Swedish social media has been full of defences for this, primarily claiming that Sweden is finding more cases due to more testing.
One way of controlling for this is to look at the positivity rate - what percent of tests return a positive result, ie a "case".
If cases are increasing because of more testing, so you're catching more of them, then the positivity rate should be declining.
This is not the case, and we still far exceed our Nordic neighbours, and far above the WHO benchmark of 5% - indicating Sweden is not testing enough.
For a comparison of what large scale testing actually means -
Sweden reported conducting 316107 tests in Week 16.
Denmark is conducting approx 400000 to 500000 tests *a day*, a combination of PCR tests and rapid antigen tests.
The decline in cases in Swede, albeit slow, is however good news and has been apparent for more than a week now, so it would appear to be real, and hopefully sustained.
There are however some concerning signs in Stockholm, with a slight uptick in the last few days. Something to keep an eye on when new data comes in next week.
Hospitalisation rates continue to decline, however ICU appears to have plateaued somewhat. (graph @covidxix)
Over 80% of 70+ yr olds and more than 50% of 60-69yr olds now having received at least 1 vaccine dose, and nearly a third of all adults. We should continue to see a decline in transmission rates, and mortality should start to reflect this over the next week.
Remember though, this virus is not just about mortality. Sweden's case rate continues to be far above the European average.
35000 new cases/wk means 3500 new people with long term health issues. 14000 *new* a month. This will have ongoing massive negative effects on society.
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