Sweden now has highest deaths per head worldwide after rejecting lockdown

Sweden has had more deaths per capita than any other country in the past week, fresh data suggests.

It is one of the few developed countries with major outbreaks to have resisted going into lockdown, although life in the country has not continued as normal as people widely opted to follow stay-at-home and social distancing guidelines.

Officials have counted 5.59 deaths for every million people as a rolling seven-day average for the week leading up to May 29, according to European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control figures.

Rolling averages are used to account for the day-to-day fluctuations in death rates and can be compared across countries on Oxford University’s Our World In Data service.

Comparison with other countries’ deaths-per-head data show Sweden began to pull ahead from Brazil on Tuesday.

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Testing limitations and differences in how countries attribute the cause of death means the figures may not represent the true picture of Covid-19 deaths.

Most major countries now also have relatively similar death rates per capita as the virus’ spread has largely fallen to manageable levels, meaning they are more likely to pull ahead of each other after small fluctuations.

Belgium has generally had far more deaths per capita than any comparable country, despite having gone into lockdown just a week after Italy and having Europe’s most well-funded healthcare system.

Norway and Denmark today announced they will reopen their borders to each other but not Sweden.

The Danish government said it would allow Norwegian, German and Icelandic tourists into the country from June 15 while Norway said it would do so for Danish visitors.

Cyprus will also open up to Norwegians, Danes and Fins on June 9, but not Swedes.

Sweden’s latest figures show 35,727 confirmed coronavirus cases and 4,266 deaths as of 28 May.

Schools in the country have been closed since mid-March, although they will reopen on June 15.

Latin America is currently considered the global epicentre of the pandemic, largely due to Brazil’s high infection rates.

The UK briefly had the highest deaths-per-head worldwide at two separate times in May, although it has mainly remained between second and fourth place among large countries.

However, according to data compiled by the FT it has suffered the second-highest rate of excess deaths from the pandemic as a whole after Spain among countries with good data.

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