Sweden, which opted against any coronavirus lockdowns, has reported its highest death toll in the first six months of a year since 1869, Newsweek reports.
According to the country’s Statistics Office, between January and June, 51,405 people died. The country has a total population of 10.3 million, according to records.
The death toll is the highest reported for the first six months of a year in more than 150 years. In 1869, 55,431 people died amid a famine. At that time, the population was around 4.1 million, according to Newsweek.
The country’s death toll jumped 10% due to coronavirus, higher than the average of the past 5 years. In the month of April, the deaths were 40% higher than average.
Sweden reported more than 85,000 coronavirus cases and 5,802 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. The country’s case fatality rate is 6.8%, which is higher than Norway’s 2.6% rate and Denmark’s 3.8% rate.
Sweden’s Wednesday announcement on the death toll came the same day that doctors reported the first coronavirus case of a newborn baby in the country, according to healthcare watchdog Dagens Medicin.
Doctors think the baby may have become infected in the womb, but aren’t certain, according to Newsweek.
"Sadly this [the death toll in the first half of the year] is not surprising,” Martin McKee, professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, U.K., told Newsweek. “For several decades Sweden has stood out as an exemplar of effective public health policies in many areas, so many of us have watched with surprise at how it has mishandled the COVID pandemic.”
He said Sweden “should admit they were wrong” about how to handle the virus.
"It is now very clear that early assumptions about the nature of this disease were mistaken,” McKee said. “That is understandable as we were all learning. What is most worrying is a seeming inability to learn from these mistakes. However, we should recall that Sweden was held up as an example by many elsewhere who opposed lockdowns. They too should admit they were wrong."
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