STOCKHOLM, 11 February (Xinhua) – On Thursday, the Swedish government promised to implement its vaccination plans according to plan after concerns raised by the country’s state epidemiologist earlier this week.
“There is nothing today that indicates that we could not handle this, provided we receive the (vaccine) deliveries we have an agreement on,” Lena Hallengren, Minister of Health and Social Affairs, told reporters on Thursday.
On Wednesday, state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell told the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter that the plan to vaccinate all adult Swedes at the end of June may fail due to problems with vaccine delivery. And at Thursday’s press conference, he expressed a new concern: the more contagious coronavirus mutation that was first discovered in the UK is spreading in Sweden.
“We can see that we are relatively high in Sweden and we also see a statistically clear increase in some of the regions. This is definitely something we need to keep an eye on.”
However, there were signs that the vaccination program was reducing the burden on the country. The number of COVID-19-related deaths, the vast majority of which have been registered among the oldest elderly population, seems to be declining. The same group was part of the first phase of the Swedish vaccination program and now the turn has come to those who are 65 years and older and to younger individuals with certain medical conditions.
A total of 12,370 COVID-19-related deaths had been registered in Sweden on Thursday, 44 more than the previous day. Since the pandemic started, 604,577 people had been confirmed infected, 4,333 more than on Wednesday.
As the world struggles to control pandemics, vaccination is underway in some countries with the already authorized coronavirus vaccines.
At the same time, 242 candidate vaccines are still being developed worldwide – 63 of them in clinical trials – in countries such as Germany, China, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, according to information published by the World Health Organization on 9 February.
Source: sn.dk