The risk has increased for new corona drops in Sweden

The risk of new cases in Sweden being infected abroad is high, which means the second highest level on a five-degree scale.

The Public Health Authority bases its new assessment on an analysis of the spread of the virus in the world, primarily through data from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Infection Protection Agency (ECDC).

- That we will have further stray falls, that risk is obviously higher now, given the development in Italy, says Anders Tegnell, state epidemiologist at the Public Health Authority, to TT.

However, the risk of a general spread in the country is low, which means the second lowest level on the five-degree scale, writes the Public Health Authority.

- We certainly raise that assessment from very low to low, but we still make the assessment that this risk is small, says Tegnell.

So far, only one person has been found infected with the virus in Sweden. The case did not entail any spread of infection.

Extensive sampling is underway both in Sweden and in Europe in order to be able to find suspicious cases early and prevent the spread of infection, according to the Public Health Authority.

- It is the most important thing we can do in Sweden right now, to find these cases as early as possible, says Anders Tegnell.

What are the first symptoms?

- They are often rather vague, but consist of fever and some form of respiratory distress. If you have respiratory symptoms and have been in these countries or regions, you should be fairly generous and contact your health care as early as possible. But you should not sit in the emergency room, but call.

So far, he says, there is only one ongoing spread of the new corona virus in one place in the world, and that is China.

- We don't really know what it takes to establish the virus in more places.

But Italy then, isn't it a spread of infection there?

- No, it takes quite a lot more for it to be established there with a general spread of infection in the community. But we'll see what happens in the next few days. The development there, and in Iran, which has had quite a few deaths, but where we know much less about the spread, will be of great importance.

The tricky thing about this virus, according to Tegnell, is that it seems to have a varying infectivity.

- We have had a few hundred cases outside China that have not infected anyone at all. But then we have a handful of cases that have infected many. It seems that in certain circumstances, some people may become so-called super-dispersers.

Why?

- It is probably a combination of how many viruses they have and that they live in an environment that promotes the spread of infection, perhaps in a room with many people or similar.