By summer 2020, the first wave of COVID-19 in Sweden seemed to have run its course. The rate of new infections was finally on the way down, but the absolute death toll – over 5,000 already – appeared appalling. It was more than tenfold that of the other Nordic countries and, measured per capita, Sweden ranked among the 20 worst-off countries in the world. However, it should be remembered that each country had its own way of measuring fatalities; Swedish statistics compiled by FHM, for instance, count the number of persons who die with COVID-19 after PCR test confirmation, regardless of the actual cause of death (Garcia, 2021). In any case, the toll was very high, and nearly half of the mortality had been among those receiving elderly care. Whereas in the UK many elderly patients were in spring 2020 discharged from NHS facilities to nursing homes without even being tested (Amnesty International, 2020), in Sweden hard priorities were set, and many old people died in their residences without being transferred to ICUs, although the authorities claimed that there was no shortage of such emergency beds. The controversy triggered an inquiry by the Health and Social Care Inspectorate (Inspektionen för vård och omsorg, IVO) to establish whether people had been denied legitimate care. In June 2020, the military field hospital that had been set up in Stockholm was discontinued without having been put to much use. Facing the facts, the government was forced to admit that at least this essential objective of protecting the frail and elderly was a failure, although it was considered too early to judge the overall strategy. But from opposition leaders came words stronger than ‘failure’. The leader of the SD, Jimmie Åkesson, called it a ‘massacre’. All this led the government to set up a commission of inquiry (Coronakommissionen) in June 2020 that would deliver its first, preliminary report in the autumn.

On the economic side of things, a small export-oriented economy was bound to suffer from the drastic reduction of activity worldwide, but it was hoped that the light-touch strategy would be less detrimental to the Swedish economy. In the first half of 2020, GDP had fallen by some 4%, much less than in France or the UK, but not so different from the other Nordic nations, which already had lower unemployment.