An article in the NZ Herald on May 27, 2020 predicted Sweden would have 56,000 more COVID-19 deaths and had made “a fatal mistake”. At the time of publishing, Sweden had experienced 4408 deaths.
So, how’s that prediction looking five months on?
It was wrong. The deaths have not been 56,000, but as at 23 October, 5,933.
In the past five months a further 1525 people sadly died.
Daily deaths plateaued in July, and over the following three months (23 July to 23 i.e., 92 days) 202 people – an average of just over 2 a day – have died. To put that into perspective, ca. 246 people die every day in Sweden; 77 from cardiovascular disease (Sweden’s biggest killer).
Despite an upsurge in cases (starting ca. 4th September) that now matches the peak of cases recorded in June 2020, the average daily death since 4 September has been 1.8 deaths per day. Over the last seven days, (16 to 23 October) the daily death rate was 0.57.
Data taken from: ourworldindata.org
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