King Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden has acknowledged the failure of the national strategy to combat coronavirus, which provides for the abandonment of quarantine. He announced this to the SVT Nyheter TV channel.
“We have a lot of deaths, and this is terrible,” he said. The king noted that the citizens of Sweden suffered greatly, many could not say goodbye to their deceased family members. According to the monarch, this will be a difficult and painful experience for the country.
When asked if the king himself is afraid of contracting COVID-19, he said that the inevitability of infection has been obvious lately.
In November it was reported that less than half of the Swedes remained confident in the loyalty of the chosen government strategy to combat coronavirus. The poll also found that 82 percent of Swedes have doubts about the ability of their health care system to cope with the stress during the pandemic. Experts believe that such numbers indicate a growing anxiety in society.
Sweden has become one of the few countries (and the only one in the European Union ) that did not introduce tough restrictions due to the spread of the coronavirus. The country’s authorities emphasized that they are striving to develop collective immunity for the population and do not want to allow damage to the economy. Now the country has registered about 350 thousand cases of coronavirus infection and more than 7.8 thousand deaths.