46% of the Scandinavian country’s nearly 6,000 coronavirus deaths have been recorded among aged care residents – now it seems these numbers are at risk of going up again.
A number of aged care homes are reporting positive cases among residents as cases of community transmission increase to several thousand a day – its highest daily case count since the pandemic began.
In Gothenburg, Sweden’s second-largest city, 13 aged care residents in five different city districts have been confirmed as positive in recent days.
As we reported here, Sweden lifted restrictions on visitors to aged care homes on 1 October but elected not to put these back in place as case numbers lifted.
While new restrictions such as avoiding physical contact with people outside a person’s household and an eight-person limit on restaurant booking have been introduced, these are not legally enforced and breaking them will not result in any fines.
Sweden has the 14th-highest number of COVID deaths per capita in the world – around 3.3% of its aged care residents or over 2,700 people are reported to have died of COVID.
