Closure of schools during the pandemic was deemed an ‘inefficient policy’ since children don’t face a high risk from the virus.
Imposing restrictive lockdown measures during the COVID-19 pandemic led to higher excess mortality in such nations while also damaging their economies, according to a recent Swedish study.
Published in the Economic Affairs journal on Feb. 11, the study—which looked at the health and economic effects of COVID-19 lockdowns in Sweden—found that its less restrictive COVID-19 policies led to lower excess mortality compared to many European nations that imposed stronger lockdown rules. Sweden also suffered a lower negative impact on gross domestic product (GDP) growth during the pandemic period.
Many policymakers made two key mistakes, researchers concluded.
“First, they introduced lockdowns that were too stringent and had negligible positive health effects despite the evidence available at the time pointing toward the limited benefits of such broad measures.
“Second, they responded to the downturn in economic activity with fiscal and monetary policies that were excessively expansionary.”
Researchers looked at the excess mortality in Sweden between January 2020 and July 2022, comparing it to other European nations in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) group.
“Sweden and the other Nordic countries had among the lowest cumulative excess mortality rates of all European countries towards the end of the sample period,” they found. “Countries such as Finland and Norway, with the lowest average lockdown rate, show the lowest excess mortality, actually displaying a negative excess mortality rate.”
“Sweden, which lagged behind other countries in March 2020 in introducing lockdown measures and then largely had an average lockdown rate, has one of the lowest cumulative excess mortality rates towards the end of the pandemic.”
Nations that imposed more stringent lockdown measures didn’t have a lower excess mortality rate, the study said.
For instance, school closures were likely an “inefficient policy” since kids were “relatively mildly affected by Covid-19 and were not a major source of the spread of the virus.”
Of the 20,000 deaths in Sweden during the pandemic, only 21 people younger than the age of 19 years died even as all primary schools remained open throughout the pandemic, the study noted.
