The journalists were urged to keep their distance and not be crowded during the Public Health Authority's daily press conference for the covid-19 situation.
A mantra that Anders Tegnell then repeated, addressed to the public, while presenting the latest bleak figures for the spread of infection in Sweden.
- It is a very serious health threat that we see ahead of us that we will probably have to live with for a good while. In Sweden we have now approached almost 5,500 cases with about 500 new cases in the last 24 hours, which is the most we have had any day.
Tegnell then stated that more than 400 of these are intensive care in various parts of the country and that a majority of them are in the Stockholm area. But Uppsala and Östergötland also have many intensive care patients.
"Achieved new level"- We are at a new level with cases where we now lie between 400 and 500 cases a day for a few days in a row. Unfortunately, we have probably reached a new level with new cases.
Anders Tegnell emphasizes that one of the most important efforts any individual can make is to protect those who are part of the group "elderly elderly", ie people over 70 years.
"We are worried"- We are worried about the group of elderly elderly. Half of all cases at this time belong to this category. We get signals from mainly Stockholm but also other parts of the country that unfortunately you get the infection in the elderly, which is very unfortunate, as it has great effects on mortality and burden on intensive care.
According to the statistics presented by the Public Health Agency, it is clear that it is precisely among people over 70 that the increase in cases is happening faster.
- The number of deceased people is also increasing, quite expected given that so many elderly people get sick. We are at about 25, 30 new deceased per day.
Tegnell explains that the death toll has a lot of backlog. Therefore, the state epidemiologist explains, a process has now begun in which everyone who is diagnosed with covid-19 is checked against the death register and checks with the regions whether the death was caused by covid-19 or not.