Sweden Report

Sweden’s approach to managing the coronavirus crisis was dominated by a series of nonbinding guidelines and recommendations that served as the framework for contagion mitigation measures throughout 2020 (Ludvigsson 2020, Petridou 2020), that is, “nudges against pandemics” (Pierre 2020). This approach attracted considerable attention, since it departed from most national approaches, including the ones by the country’s geographically proximate and culturally similar Nordic neighbors. Conversely, the rate of deaths due to the pandemic has been higher in Sweden than in many European countries.