Sweden excluded as neighbours Denmark and Norway ease travel restrictions

[rooster59]

Sweden excluded as neighbours Denmark and Norway ease travel restrictions

By Terje Solsvik and Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen

 

FILE PHOTO: A sign assures people that the bar is open during the coronavirus outbreak, outside a pub in Stockholm, Sweden March 26, 2020. Picture taken March 26, 2020. REUTERS/Colm Fulton

 

OSLO/COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Norway and Denmark will allow tourists to travel between the two countries from mid-June, their governments announced on Friday, although border crossings with Sweden, where the number of COVID-19 infections is higher, will remain restricted.

 

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg said in separate news conferences that most restrictions related to travel between the two countries would end on June 15.

 

"We can't open too suddenly, that would jeopardise everything we've accomplished," Norway's Solberg said.

 

Denmark will also welcome tourists from Germany and Iceland. All foreign visitors will need to book at least six nights accommodation before arriving and they will not be allowed to stay in the capital Copenhagen, where most of the country's coronavirus infections are.

 

Tourists from Sweden will still not be able to visit. Sweden's death rate per capita from the disease is many times higher than the combined total of the other Nordic countries.

 

"We are looking at the possibility of regional solutions, for example opening up the Oresund region," Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde said at a news conference on Friday, adding she had been in contact with the Danish foreign minister on Friday.

 

Meanwhile, Sweden has advised all its citizens against travelling abroad until July 15.

 

On Tuesday, Linde said excluding Sweden from moves to open borders across the Nordic region would be a political decision and not justifiable on health grounds.

 

She also added that the COVID-19 spread and death rate was higher in the Copenhagen area than in the Swedish region Skane that borders Denmark.

 

Thousands of people are also exempt from the travel restrictions and commute daily between Denmark and southern Sweden.

 

Norway announced on Thursday it would allow business travel to resume across the Nordic region from June 1.

 

The idea of travel bubbles, or travel corridors, is gaining traction with governments around the world as a way to restart international travel as the pandemic eases.

 

(Additional reporting by Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen, Victoria Klesty in Oslo and Simon Johnson and Johan Ahlander in Stockholm; Writing by Gwladys Fouche; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Frances Kerry)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2020-05-30

 

- Whatever you're going through, the Samaritans are here for you

- Follow Thaivisa on LINE for breaking COVID-19 updates

[nauseus]

Shame. And I thought they'd done so well without those pesky lockdowns.

[rudi49jr]

15 minutes ago, nauseus said:

Shame. And I thought they'd done so well without those pesky lockdowns.

They didn’t, at least not in comparison to their neighboring countries.

[khunPer]

Pay back time to Sweden for beating us in football...????

Edited May 30, 2020 by khunPer

[balo]

Norwegians are also allowed to visit Iceland from 15th June. If there's any flights...

Sweden remains a "no-go zone." 
 

[ncc1701d]

If there weren’t so many deaths in Sweden, it would be laughable that all the anti lockdown people were hailing it as being the way to go. 

[Bkk Brian]

2 hours ago, balo said:

Norwegians are also allowed to visit Iceland from 15th June. If there's any flights...

Sweden remains a "no-go zone." 
 

The tiny country of Iceland did well after its 6 week lockdown.

[kiwikeith]

16 hours ago, nauseus said:

Shame. And I thought they'd done so well without those pesky lockdowns.

  NZ,people are now bitching about losing income from the lockdown. NZ has only one active case now and is at level 2 everyone is back to work. Half the 20 deaths were from old people’s homes, the majority of Sweden’s deaths were from old people’s homes. So if the NZ government had not locked down we would be without many loved grandparents. All the rednecks come out of the woods now, it’s election time and all these smart ass people are now turning on the  government,after such a great job ,mostly the rich and the political opposition.

[Patong2]

52 minutes ago, kiwikeith said:

  NZ,people are now bitching about losing income from the lockdown. NZ has only one active case now and is at level 2 everyone is back to work. Half the 20 deaths were from old people’s homes, the majority of Sweden’s deaths were from old people’s homes. So if the NZ government had not locked down we would be without many loved grandparents. All the rednecks come out of the woods now, it’s election time and all these smart ass people are now turning on the  government,after such a great job ,mostly the rich and the political opposition.

The criticism of the NZ govt and "I'm on TV" Adern is because they closed the businesses down while allowing planeloads of people in without any checks on them for weeks and these people spread Covid 19 to most of the "clusters"

The NZ economy has been severely hit and the number of suicides through business failure and job losses will far exceed the 16 dementia affected elderly people who were infected in supposed safe hospitals. the other 5 I haven't kept note of but I understand they were elderly and had underlying conditions too.

There has been basically no testing and people who have been at risk have been refused tests. A totally incompetent Health Ministry.

NZ has been turned into the Venezuela of the South Pacific on the whim of a totally inexperienced leader who is surrounded by even more incompetent ministers. Food parcels being handed out by the government??? 

And before you say it, yes I am probably rich by your standards and I'm definitely a wannabee redneck but I cannot get out of this goddamn awful place to get some sun on my neck.

[pegman]

2 hours ago, Patong2 said:

The criticism of the NZ govt and "I'm on TV" Adern is because they closed the businesses down while allowing planeloads of people in without any checks on them for weeks and these people spread Covid 19 to most of the "clusters"

The NZ economy has been severely hit and the number of suicides through business failure and job losses will far exceed the 16 dementia affected elderly people who were infected in supposed safe hospitals. the other 5 I haven't kept note of but I understand they were elderly and had underlying conditions too.

There has been basically no testing and people who have been at risk have been refused tests. A totally incompetent Health Ministry.

NZ has been turned into the Venezuela of the South Pacific on the whim of a totally inexperienced leader who is surrounded by even more incompetent ministers. Food parcels being handed out by the government??? 

And before you say it, yes I am probably rich by your standards and I'm definitely a wannabee redneck but I cannot get out of this goddamn awful place to get some sun on my neck.

Isn't it terrible when results are so good. My province in Canada has had 7 deaths amoung our 1.4m residents. I generally have no use for our Conservative provincial gov but based on the results from our lockdown I give them high praise. A recent survey stated 49% thought reopening was going at the right pace, 6% wanted it speeded up and the remaining people wanted it slowed down. That didn't stop some right wingers from protesting the lockdown at our legislature today.

[Bkk Brian]

3 hours ago, Patong2 said:

The criticism of the NZ govt and "I'm on TV" Adern is because they closed the businesses down while allowing planeloads of people in without any checks on them for weeks and these people spread Covid 19 to most of the "clusters"

The NZ economy has been severely hit and the number of suicides through business failure and job losses will far exceed the 16 dementia affected elderly people who were infected in supposed safe hospitals. the other 5 I haven't kept note of but I understand they were elderly and had underlying conditions too.

Economies in every single country have been hit, hard as have elderly, not matter what model the country has used to fight the virus. 

 

22 confirmed deaths from Covid and 1,504 cases seems like a good outcome so far.

[RobFord]

It will be interesting to see if Thailand follows suit. The UK and US and others may have a long wait. 
 

China not so much.

[TheDark]

Sweden did a countrywide experiment, which ended up being culling of elderly people. 

 

They believed one guy at the helm of the pandemic response. Unfortunately this person's views were not correct. 

 

Hopefully he and the Swedish government will take responsibilities for their actions and policies.

[samran]

14 hours ago, Patong2 said:

 

And before you say it, yes I am probably rich by your standards and I'm definitely a wannabee redneck but I cannot get out of this goddamn awful place to get some sun on my neck.

So in short: it’s Jacinda’s fault that you can’t get a tan? Talk about first world problems.
 

Who’s going to let you in to their country by the way? Or is that Jacinda’s fault as well?

[IamRoach]

On 5/30/2020 at 3:01 PM, ncc1701d said:

If there weren’t so many deaths in Sweden, it would be laughable that all the anti lockdown people were hailing it as being the way to go. 

I still believe it is the way to go but it's easy to manipulate figures to make Sweden look worse than it actually is.

65% of deaths in Sweden are people over the age of 80 and new infections & deaths are following the same downwards curve as other European countries. The only reason for the high number of deaths is that they didn't protect homes for elderly people earlier on. If they did that they would hailed as the winners in all of this.

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa

[stevenl]

1 hour ago, IamRoach said:

I still believe it is the way to go but it's easy to manipulate figures to make Sweden look worse than it actually is.

65% of deaths in Sweden are people over the age of 80 and new infections & deaths are following the same downwards curve as other European countries. The only reason for the high number of deaths is that they didn't protect homes for elderly people earlier on. If they did that they would hailed as the winners in all of this.

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa

Even then their herd experiment would have failed, 8% or something now?

[Sophon]

1 hour ago, IamRoach said:

I still believe it is the way to go but it's easy to manipulate figures to make Sweden look worse than it actually is.

65% of deaths in Sweden are people over the age of 80 and new infections & deaths are following the same downwards curve as other European countries. The only reason for the high number of deaths is that they didn't protect homes for elderly people earlier on. If they did that they would hailed as the winners in all of this.

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa

No, Sweden is not showing the same downwards curve as other European countries (as your own link also demonstrates). Norway is probably the country that comes closest to Sweden in geographic location, population density culture etc. and have a totally different infection picture than Sweden.

 

From https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

 

 

 

 

Of course, it has to be taken into account that Sweden has almost twice the population of Norway. Even so, Sweden has 435 deaths per million as of today and is well on it's way to pass France in that respect and become the 5th worst hit country in the world (not counting miniature countries like San Marino and Andorra). Norway's death toll per million on the other hand stands at 44, almost exactly one tenth of the Swedish figure.

Edited May 31, 2020 by Sophon

[Bkk Brian]

2 minutes ago, Sophon said:

No, Sweden is not showing the same downwards curve as other European countries (as your own link also demnstrates). Norway is probably the country that comes closest to Sweden in geographic location, population density culture etc. and have a totally different infection picture than Sweden.

Indeed in daily new infections Sweden is not really on a downward curve, more flat lining then anything. But maybe I'm missing the intention here by Sweden, if they're on this herd immunity policy then they would like to see the daily infections rising correct? If they start falling then there's no way on earth they'll reach their target of herd immunity.

 

I may be completely off track here, its just that this was my assumption.

 

Daily death figures are going down but that could be down to them protecting the elderly population better now.

[ncc1701d]

20 hours ago, IamRoach said:

I still believe it is the way to go but it's easy to manipulate figures to make Sweden look worse than it actually is.

65% of deaths in Sweden are people over the age of 80 and new infections & deaths are following the same downwards curve as other European countries. The only reason for the high number of deaths is that they didn't protect homes for elderly people earlier on. If they did that they would hailed as the winners in all of this.

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa

so you’re saying if they had locked down like everyone else, they’d be winning... like everyone else.
 

But they didn’t, so they aren’t.

[Patong2]

On 6/1/2020 at 12:14 AM, samran said:

So in short: it’s Jacinda’s fault that you can’t get a tan? Talk about first world problems.
 

Who’s going to let you in to their country by the way? Or is that Jacinda’s fault as well?

Lost your sense of humour?

 

 Probably an early sign of Lockdown Dementia or are you just normally this sour?

[johnpetersen]

On 5/31/2020 at 7:26 PM, IamRoach said:

I still believe it is the way to go but it's easy to manipulate figures to make Sweden look worse than it actually is.

65% of deaths in Sweden are people over the age of 80 and new infections & deaths are following the same downwards curve as other European countries. The only reason for the high number of deaths is that they didn't protect homes for elderly people earlier on. If they did that they would hailed as the winners in all of this.

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa

Man Behind Sweden’s Controversial Virus Strategy Admits Mistakes

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-03/man-behind-sweden-s-virus-strategy-says-he-got-some-things-wrong