The Karen deduction is temporarily canceled, following an agreement between the Social Democrats, the Center Party, the Liberals and the Environment Party.

This means that both as an employee and as a self-employed person you can apply for reimbursement for the first day of sickness.

The search service opened on Tuesday, April 7, and during the first week, 250,000 applications have been received by the Social Insurance Office.

"High pressure"

A large part of the applications are retroactive, as it is possible to apply for remuneration for retention deductions retroactively from 11 March.

- The first few days it was a big push and many people have applied retroactively, says Cecilia Udin.

Many applications are also expected to be submitted in the future.

- I have no forecast for how many we have thought, it is entirely dependent on how many people are at home. But there will be new people coming in, says Cecilia Udin.

The lump sum is paid out

The compensation is usually paid out within five working days after applying. The high inflow of applications will not affect the time it takes to receive the compensation, according to Cecilia Udin.

- Approximately 90 percent of the applications will be handled by machine directly and then you will usually receive money within five days. If the machine flow cannot handle the application all the way, an administrator will take care of it, and then it may take longer, she says.

The compensation is a lump sum and is therefore the same regardless of the salary you have. The amount is SEK 700 before tax for employees and SEK 804 before tax for self-employed persons.

At present, the Social Insurance Agency has no information on how many of the 250,000 people who have applied so far are employed, and how many of them are self-employed.