Thread by @FLAHAULT

1/12 - “Sanna Marin, Finland’s prime minister [the country with the lowest number of cases in the EU] said that the public across Europe could blame governments for closing economies and hurting their wages and employment.” ft.com/content/aa8319…

2/12 - “This will cause protests more and more, and it’s a breeding ground for populist movements across Europe. When you’re closing an economy and people’s workplaces, it will cause political instability.”

3/12 - “Populists come with easy answers to difficult problems, but their solutions are rarely the right ones,” Finland’s PM Sanna Marin added.

4/12 - “Ms Marin called for Europe to agree a common strategy, a significant move as Finland is the only EU country not to be hit by a strong second wave of Covid-19 this autumn. It has an average of about 40 daily cases/1Mpop, Austria has 20 x, the Czechia 15x, and Sweden 10x.”

5/12 - “Ms Marin said Finland’s success was down to a robust test and trace regime, half the population using its #COVID19 tracking app, and targeted restrictions, which include quarantine for almost all travellers from Europe.”

6/12 - “This is not a competition. We all need to be successful to be safe . . . In Finland, the situation is more stable, but still we are also more at risk if the virus spreads in other countries,” Finland’s PM Sanna Marin added.”

7/12- “I think that the situation might get even worse and people might get even more tired. The situation has got worse in the autumn. People often want to find someone to blame and often the easiest ones to blame are the governments and politicians,” Finland’s PM S. Marin said”

8/12 - “It could get worse very fast if we aren’t aware of the seriousness of the situation and we don’t constantly take care of our actions, Finland’s PM Sanna Marin said.”

9/12 - “In contrast to some other countries, contact tracing has been very effective [in] the summer and fall. [Finland] had been able to identify the source of infection in 80% of cases in many regions, while many “secondary cases” occurred in people already in quarantine.”

10/12 -“Finland’s economy has been one of the least affected by #COVID19 this year, and Ms Marin said she saw no distinction between protecting health and protecting the economy. We need to get the virus under control. This is the main thing we need to decide: to stop the virus.”

11/12 - “Testing is key — we need to test people more. This is the key to maintaining the situation under control. We don’t want to stop people from travelling, we want to stop the virus from spreading,” Ms Sanna Marin added.

12/12 - “Finland’s PM Sanna Marin argued that “EU countries should make a joint conscious decision that we want to get the virus under control. I haven’t seen the decision made together that we want to suppress the virus as much as possible.”