"We made this decision because we were informed about the same day that we had a social spread in Norrbotten," says Gabriella Sjöström, social manager in the municipality of Luleå.

In the video above, Social Manager Gabriella Sjöström tells more about how they went about it.

Visiting ban March 20 instead of April 1st

On April 1st, the government decided to ban visitors to all elderly homes in Sweden. But several municipalities had already taken the law into their own hands and introduced a visitor stop. Luleå municipality was one of them. They chose to impose a visitor ban on their nursing homes on March 20.

However, it is difficult to say how much the stoppage of visitors meant for the spread of infection in Luleå. In Kiruna, for example, they were also out early with a ban on visiting their elderly homes, but despite this, several have died in covid-19, while Luleå has only had one death so far.

"The stoppage of visitors has reduced the spread of infection"

Greger Bengtsson, senior care coordinator in Sweden's municipalities and regions (SKR), also says that it is difficult to know how much an earlier visitor stop meant, but that two key issues for not getting the infection into the elderly homes have been the ban on visits and testing of staff.

- Our assessment is that the stoppage of visitors has reduced the spread of infection. But I do not know if we will be able to get all the answers afterwards.