Sweden's death toll stands out in a Nordic comparison. When the neighboring countries together reported 1,076 dead, 3,460 people in Sweden lost their lives.

- These are hard numbers. It's not just numbers, it's somebody's mom and someone's kid. It will be lasting memories, says Interior Minister Mikael Damberg.

The virus came with the sports lovers

Why Sweden has been hit harder cannot be answered today, but there are different theories, says Damberg.

- One is that we have sports holiday weeks and Swedes travel a lot to these countries that turned out to have the virus. We have 20-30,000 these weeks that traveled to the Alps and that brought a lot of contagion to Sweden. But then also that we failed to stop the infection in the home service. Almost 75 per cent of the dead in Sweden either have home care or live in the elderly. In the beginning, we were not prepared enough for it.

When you see the high death tolls, have you ever thought this is the wrong path? It barking years wrong hole?

- I think many times during such a crisis you think "what can we do differently?" First we said that you should not visit elderly care, now we work much more with educational efforts, says Mikael Damberg.

Protective equipment The responsibility of employers

How the infection got into the homes of the elderly and to the elderly with home care is not clear. But SVT, among other things, has drawn attention to how the elderly care staff often worked with no or inferior protective equipment. It has also occurred that staff worked despite the symptoms of illness.

But Mikael Damberg does not think it is relevant to tighten the rules regarding protective equipment for those who work with the elderly.

- It is the employers who have to make sure it is a safe workplace. If there are risks, employers must ensure that protective equipment is available. These are not political decisions. We think that the authorities that are best at spreading infection and in routines in health care should make those decisions, ”says Mikael Damberg.

But the government is also prepared to rethink Sweden's strategy if it is required, says Damberg.

- We notice that some country has done in a very wise way, if new research shows that "you should have done this way", then there is no prestige with us. Then we are broadened to retest, switch tracks to get better results.