Sweden’s Different Approach To the Coronavirus: “Children Don’t Spread the Coronavirus Like Adults” Says the National Health Association.

Schools are closing in Italy, England and Ireland, but remain open in Sweden. The last few days concerned parents in Sweden have requested that kids that have travelled to risk areas, where the coronavirus is spread, should remain home for two weeks after they’ve returned to Sweden. The National Health Association has a different view of things. They say that it’s “completely unreasonable” to keep children who have been to risk areas at home for two weeks.

“You shouldn’t let fear take overhand,” says Karin Tegmark Wisell, a microbiologist at the National Health Association, “There is no reason for healthy kids to not go to school.”

She refers to a recent study that WHO performed in China, showing that children don’t react as severely as adults getting the virus. Only 2,4% of patients infected with the coronavirus are children under the age of 18, 2,5% have developed severe symptoms, and only 0,2% critical.

“According to the study, children don’t get as severe symptoms, and that’s why they can’t spread the disease in the same way,” continues Karin Tegmark Wisell.

At the same time, the study concludes that it is not possible to determine which role children have in spreading the coronavirus.

Some politicians in Sweden don’t share the opinion of the National Health Association. Employees of the municipality of Staffanstorp, as well as children who have travelled in risk areas, are asked to stay at home for fourteen days.

The decision is based on the “conviction that it’s better to act decisively and preventative” than to have to deal with the consequences of a coronavirus outbreak.