The statistics on the number of people infected with the coronavirus are difficult to analyze.

Far from everyone is tested and there is probably a large number of blacks who have had covid-19 which is not reported in the statistics.

A negative antibody test cannot say with certainty whether you have had covid or not.

- It is a dark number that is difficult to estimate.

But for most people, covid strikes us like a common cold, says the chief physician Thomas Lindén.

He doubts that it could be as many as 150,000 with long-term problems after they fell ill with covid-19.

- There is a British study that says that it can be as many as ten percent of those infected who have this type of symptom.

I think that sounds like a high estimate.

That we would have one and a half million infected?

Well.

"In the beginning, only IVA patients were tested"

But that is exactly what Novus CEO Torbjörn Sjöström thinks they can read from the statistics.

He says that Novus has followed Sweden's general condition since the pandemic and can see that those who were ill peaked in March-April.

- But then they only tested IVA patients.

So when we had the really large spread of infection in Sweden, the public was not tested.

I absolutely believe that we in Sweden have one and a half million infected with covid-19, he says.

Not a homogeneous group

Thomas Lindén also says that it is a very mixed group, with many different problems, which makes it difficult to put a number.

- There are people with, for example, fever who come and go for several weeks.

They do not get really healthy.

Others have had an illness and have symptoms that you also have if you have been seriously ill.

You are tired, have headaches, dizziness and muscle aches - something you get after several illnesses.

- Then there are those who get permanent damage from covid.

And a group of people who feel that they have a long covid but who actually have something else that you do not see because you have tunnel vision and interpret everything as covid right now.