Sweden is sorry – was not the worst on the OECD’s...

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recently presented a report to its 35 member countries on how they have handled the corona pandemic.

Sweden did very poorly there and the OECD pointed out, among other things, that the country struggled the most to reduce the so-called r-number, the reproduction number which shows how many an infected person on average infects further. Sweden did poorly in reducing the infection, getting people to isolate themselves and getting people discharged from the intensive care unit.

Background: Sweden is singled out as corona aggravation

According to the OECD, it took Malta, which was best in class, only eleven days to bring the r number down to less than one, while in Sweden it took 58 days, the worst of all countries according to statistics. In comparison, Norway spent 27 days.

Revealed number curl

The Swedes have complained about the numbers. According to SVT, which pointed out the error, the organization has mixed up the number of tests per 100,000 inhabitants divided into days and weeks for several countries, including Sweden.

– The value is seven times too high. According to them, we were almost at the top when it comes to the number of tests and that is not true, says Anders Björkman, professor of infectious diseases at Karolinska Institutet to SVT.

– It is frightening and amazing that they get through these factual errors. This shows a lack of insight into the covid epidemic, says Björkman to the channel.

Sweden’s state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell has also been critical of the report and said that the OECD has not understood the complexity of the data, but only looked at them as economic figures.

Admits mistakes

Confronted with the calculation error, Guillaume Dedet in the health department of the OECD admits that they have missed.

– It is a calculation error for Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden. We will update the report in the next few days, he says in a statement to the channel.

In another study, conducted by Bloomberg, Sweden ended up in 16th place out of 53 countries surveyed when they looked at the overall picture of how the pandemic has been handled. In comparison, Finland (5th place), Norway (6th place) and Denmark (9th place) all ended up in the top ten of the 53 countries in the ranking.