People in a park at Tantolunden in Stockholm, Sweden, which refused to close down schools and restaurants to contain the new coronavirus. Photo / Loulou D'Aki, Bloomberg
People in a park at Tantolunden in Stockholm, Sweden, which refused to close down schools and restaurants to contain the new coronavirus. Photo / Loulou D'Aki, Bloomberg
In an interview with the Telegraph, Dr Tegnell argues there is an increased spread in countries that enforce face-mask wearing
As face masks become mandatory on public transport in Denmark from Saturday morning, Sweden is now in the position it has been in so often during the coronavirus pandemic - alone.
The country, which chose not to close lower secondary schools, pubs, restaurants and sports facilities at the peak in April, is again an outlier in not recommending the general public wear face masks.
Dr Anders Tegnell, the country's state epidemiologist, told the Daily Telegraph he did not expect the Public Health Agency of Sweden to follow Norway, Finland and Denmark and drop its opposition to masks when it recommends new measures to Sweden's government at the start of next month.
"The main risk, I think, is that people will think: 'okay, I'm wearing a face mask. I don't need to take these other precautions'," he said, saying his agency believed social distancing and self-isolation of the sick were "much more important".
While he admitted there was no study showing that face masks did in fact reduce adherence to other guidelines, he pointed to the trajectory of cases in countries that have mandated them.
"There is now a continuous and even increased spread in a number of countries who implemented face masks," he said.
"There is a belief that if you just have face masks, you can forget about everything else, you can run your subway with full trains and so on."
Norway last week recommended the use of face masks on public transport in Oslo, and Finland on public transport nationwide, putting Dr Tegnell's agency under growing public pressure to follow suit.
Scientific Forum Covid-19 Sweden, a group of 45 Swedish researchers critical of Sweden's strategy, argued last Sunday in the Dagens Nyheter newspaper that masks should be worn even by students and teachers in schools.
"The scientific data is clear at this point, with most studies showing that face masks do limit the spread, and to my knowledge not a single study showing they increase the spread, so why are they so stubborn?" said Lena Einhorn, an author with a PhD in virology, who is part of the group.
But Jonas Ludvigsson, professor of clinical epidemiology at Stockholm's Karolinska Institute, who on Monday attacked the group for cherry-picking and misrepresenting studies, said that the different approach Sweden had taken was best explained by the unusual independence of its government agencies.
"In the other Nordic countries, politicians often have a stronger role than the experts at public health agencies."
Frode Forland, Dr Tegnell's Norwegian counterpart, told the Telegraph he believed Tegnell had "a valid argument" against face masks.
"We've been stressing that it's still much more effective to keep distance than to wear a face mask," he said. "If you keep one metre's distance, the reduction of risk of infection is about 80 per cent, but if you wear a face mask it's about 40 per cent."
He estimated that even with the rising number of cases Norway is currently experiencing, about 70,000 people would have to wear a mask for a week to prevent a single infection.
On Wednesday, Johan Carlson, the director general of the Public Health Agency and Tegnell's boss, appeared to soften the agency's stance, telling a press conference "the issue over face masks is not at all dead", and the agency was working on a review of the available evidence before issuing a list of recommendations to Sweden's government on September 1.
But Tegnell said the agency was unlikely to recommend face masks to the general public across Sweden, unless the rate of infection increases dramatically.
"There might be a role for face masks if you have increased incidence in a limited geographical area and you want to do everything to stop it as quickly as possible," he said.
But he said Sweden was seeing a downward trend in most regions of the country. "If that changes then of course we need to think about more measures, but it's a bit unusual to install more measures when you are in a downgoing trend."
