SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

Does anyone else think that it's time for them to knock these daily updates on the head, or just me?

It's becoming a hindrance now. At the beginning, even as someone who hates them it was a welcome thing to see - there was info to relay, things to tell us.

Now, there's nothing to tell us - it's just the same three helmets stood there repeating the same answers to the same questions:

"we're not ending lockdown yet"
"no vaccine this year"
"we're seeing improvements but not enough yet"
"no we aren't lying about PPE"


This is no longer helpful, if anything I think it's starting to proper piss off a large portion of society who are fed up with being hit around the head with the same information at 5pm every day. A daily reminder of how shit their life is and that it isnt going to get better just yet. "And now we have your daily reminder that your life might well be coming to an end...."

Feck off with it - do it twice a week. Once on a Tues (usually the worst day in terms of numbers) and once on a Fri to summarise any developments that have occurred that week.
Strange timing for this comment. Yesterday's was the best and most informative for a while.
 
I wonder what policy governments are going to push on the vaccine. Will it be mandatory for everyone, and if so, what measures will be taken against the anti vaxxers?

Personally I think I would be all for forcing people who refuse to take the vaccine because they believe it will give them autism, turn gay, turn frogs gay or similar to stay inside your home for the unforseable future. I mean, if the consequense is that everyone has to stay as much as possible at home and social distancing for years, I'd rather lock up the nutters and let the rest of the sane world who believes in science live a normal life.


I see no situation in which everyone is going to qualify for it anyway. I can only see it being given to those who need the flu jab for example, the elderly and physically vulnerable/unwell......I can't imagine this being rolled out and mandatory to the entire population, which should keep the anti-vaxxers happy I guess as most of them tend to be younger.
 
Seems many parts of the US and some Euro countries have gone mask crazy due to the announcements but here in Greater Manchester I rarely see them and perhaps have even reduced usage. Some of the Aldi workers who did before don't even bother now, can see it being quite uncomfortable for long periods, plastic gloves can get very sweaty too and the virus lives on them far longer. For people just nipping out for a short time to a shop I can see masks being worth it during a lockdown.
 
Strange timing for this comment. Yesterday's was the best and most informative for a while.


Out of curiosity, what information did they give us that we didn't already know? We know we're not going to see a sudden drop in cases or deaths and it's a marathon not a sprint. We know its too early for lockdown measures to be released/lessened. We know a vaccine isn't coming overnight. What exactly was the new information? For me, it was nothing but repeating the general information.
 
Could be. There's clearly a great disparity between different country's fatality rates. It will be interesting to see when this is over if it was purely down to prevalence of testing or if there were other factors.

Actually, yeah, BAME demographics isn’t the issue here. This is about testing. Uk testing of mild/community cases has been practically non-existent from day one. So their mortality rates base on confirmed cases will be higher across the board.

I know there’s been a big severity bias in Italy too but they ramped their testing up and up, over the course of the epidemic so must be getting a lot of milder cases by now, right? Those milder cases will inflate the total case number, without adding to the death toll.
 
For a while it would be yes, but after X amount of time it would become feasible. Your point is spot on though, it's really, really weird why facemasks haven't been implemented here when you can see the rewards in some other countries.

Do you think it's possible that the government isn't mentioning them, because they know the supply isn't there, and it would be yet another stick to beat them with? A political decision, then...

I think this depends on the government and the capability of the people in it. Some governments are more interested in not getting the blame than actually doing what is right... Those that are more interested in the economic effects should be all over this... Regardless, having a huge supply of facemasks should be one of the top priorities in all countries. For protecting the healthcare workers first and foremost, and then as a method to opening up the society in a responsible way...

I reckon some people in every government is aware of this possibility, but I'm not sure if these are the right people. Party politics is not a meritocracy... This method would be feasible in less populated countries with the industrial capabilities to ramp up production of these masks. Norway, Denmark, Ireland, Switzerland and Sweden (but they are herding).

Any data to back this up? I’ve heard a few ID specialists who wouldn’t put the figure anywhere near that. Some of them think facemasks could increase transmission because people get more reckless about social distancing (which sounds like the scenario you’re describing, with busy pubs and clubs)
Did throw that number out there without anything to back it up...
Table 6: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2190272/
From a 5 min search(will come back to this when I have more time.). Only skimmed the paper, so will not vehemently back up my original %... But the difference between with and without mask should not be underestimated.

I did not include the average stupidity of people when guestimating that number. Pubs and clubs are not a must, so they should be closed for the foreseeable future, regardless of availability and usage of facemasks.
 
Actually, yeah, BAME demographics isn’t the issue here. This is about testing. Uk testing of mild/community cases has been practically non-existent from day one. So their mortality rates base on confirmed cases will be higher across the board.

This. They are mainly testing those who are sick enough to be hospitalised, therefore you're going to see a much higher mortality rate because if you get hospitalised with this, you are in big trouble for the most part. The majority of people are still and have still had mild to no symptoms and haven't required hospital visits.
 
I see no situation in which everyone is going to qualify for it anyway. I can only see it being given to those who need the flu jab for example, the elderly and physically vulnerable/unwell......I can't imagine this being rolled out and mandatory to the entire population, which should keep the anti-vaxxers happy I guess as most of them tend to be younger.
Maybe so, but I imagine that here in Norway they would start with the most vulnerable and critical personel, and then advise everyone else to line up and get it. More and more of the commoners take the flu shot these days is my impression.
 


That’s grim but the way that care homes feature so highly in death tolls around the world might put their findings in context. The average 70-80 year old in a care home has a hell of a lot lower life expectancy than 70-80 year olds overall.

Goes without saying, I only read the abstract, lazy turd that I am. They probably discussed this potential bias in their conclusions.
 
You’re talking about herd immunity as though its binary. If you could ‘safely’ infect every 20-40 year old in a country and - another big if - that gave them long term immunity - you’d have a highly effective buffer to take the edge off future outbreaks. Plus there’s the big economic upside of keeping them out there, working and spending money.

Herd immunity is a HIT % of total population. I think the idea that you could infect most young people and isolate older people to the end of achieving a degree of overall herd immunity is just wishful thinking.
 
Maybe so, but I imagine that here in Norway they would start with the most vulnerable and critical personel, and then advise everyone else to line up and get it. More and more of the commoners take the flu shot these days is my impression.


Eventually yes, I'd imagine so. But for the 'needs must' situation straight off the bat, it'll be the vulnerable only.
 
Herd immunity is a HIT % of total population. I think the idea that you could infect most young people and isolate older people to the end of achieving a degree of overall herd immunity is just wishful thinking.

I know what herd immunity is. This initiative wouldn’t be about trying to achieve it. Just make a start. But yeah, keeping the young vermin apart from the rest of society is probably an insurmountable challenge.
 
Any data to back this up? I’ve heard a few ID specialists who wouldn’t put the figure anywhere near that. Some of them think facemasks could increase transmission because people get more reckless about social distancing (which sounds like the scenario you’re describing, with busy pubs and clubs)

This is exactly one of the reasons the WHO give for not (yet?) recommending their use [PDF document][web link]:
false sense of security, leading to potentially less adherence to other preventive measures such as physical distancing and hand hygiene
 
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If the mortality figures from France are accurate (0.53% of all cases are fatal), that means about 3 million people in the UK have caught the disease (which amounts to about 5% of the population). I think that's a reasonable guesstimate, given the number of people I personally know who've caught it.

If the doubling rate were to go up to every 3 weeks, it'd only take 4 months to get to 48 million infected. I really don't think that eventual herd immunity is out of the question (given that covid-19 will be with us for at least 18 months). You can't lockdown totally for the full duration, so the virus is going to continue to proliferate.
 
I wonder what policy governments are going to push on the vaccine. Will it be mandatory for everyone, and if so, what measures will be taken against the anti vaxxers?

Personally I think I would be all for forcing people who refuse to take the vaccine because they believe it will give them autism, turn gay, turn frogs gay or similar to stay inside your home for the unforseable future. I mean, if the consequense is that everyone has to stay as much as possible at home and social distancing for years, I'd rather lock up the nutters and let the rest of the sane world who believes in science live a normal life.

I doubt that we are going to see mandatory vaccination for the entire population, that would be a monumental task in terms of logistics alone and as far as I know you "only" need 60-70% of the population to achieve herd immunity anyway. I reckon they are going to offer it to the people who are most at risk and perhaps make it mandatory for certain jobs, e.g. healthcare, they could probably also enforce it as mass events, demand organizers to also check for a vaccination card at the gates. As with other
 
If the mortality figures from France are accurate (0.53% of all cases are fatal), that means about 3 million people in the UK have caught the disease (which amounts to about 5% of the population). I think that's a reasonable guesstimate, given the number of people I personally know who've caught it.

If the doubling rate were to go up to every 3 weeks, it'd only take 4 months to get to 48 million infected. I really don't think that eventual herd immunity is out of the question (given that covid-19 will be with us for at least 18 months). You can't lockdown totally for the full duration, so the virus is going to continue to proliferate.
It doesn't sound reasonable given the whole world has less than 3 million confirmed cases.
 
It doesn't sound reasonable giving the whole world has less than 3 million confirmed cases.

People who are asymptomatic are unlikely to ever get tested. People with mild symptoms will probably never goto hospital and get tested.
There's a lot of room for people who will get it and never be tested. Especially in the UK.
 
In the UK, people were found to be deliberately coughing on others, so it was made illegal [source]. Yes, it really did happen :/. I guess the main reason "knowingly being infected and going out" hasn't been made illegal is at the time, most, if not all the tests were carried out for people already in hospitals and NHS workers. Now that the test is expanding to other key workers and individuals (very slowly) perhaps the law will change in this regard to be more explicit.



The WHO actually recommend you do not remove the mask [source].



I can understand why some governments have made the decision to make masks compulsory. I am certainly not in any position to criticise that.
TL: DR: I do think they have to do that.

However, I just feel that sometimes a lot of nonsense is being said both (1) to the general public or (2) by members of the public.

Regarding (1), i.e. what is being said to the public, I worry a lot about these home made masks and "advice how to make them". I don't really buy into any of it to be honest. At least not yet. The reason for this is because as far as I understand it, none of them have been tested properly. Even if a test or standard existed however, how can you guarantee people can make them properly to those standards? It leads to a situation where the masks have variable effectiveness, or perhaps none whatsoever. People are rightly mad about a test for the virus being only 75% accurate, but don't seem to have any problems with there being little or no(?) knowledge about how effective wearing home made masks are?!

Regarding (2), i.e. what members of the general public are saying, earlier in the thread we had an individual say something along the lines of "3M masks are best". Another individual was going to wear a mask just going for a walk, with no one around. Both comments were nonsense really. Some other individuals thought you could just wash these disposable masks and re-use them, or I think the implication was to wash home made ones. Thankfully someone posted an article saying you really need a specific set of conditions to clean the masks and it did not appear you can replicate those conditions at home, at least not yet. The WHO also say you cannot reuse single use (disposable) masks [source].

On top of both (1) and (2), the science of how effective it is for the general public to be wearing masks to limit the spread of infection still isn't clear. I've seen two videos where some of the science was discussed. Both had flaws in basic terminology. I saw another article where the author(s) stated (t)he(y) would release simulation details on linkedin. Absolutely bizarre, something I've never come across before and sets the alarm bells ringing. Note that the WHO still doesn't advice the public to wear masks. One reason given was that there is a risk that "they can be contaminated by other people's coughs and sneezes, or when putting them on or removing them" [source].

Having said all of that, I'm not adverse to the general public wearing masks and I certainly don't envy the policy makers having to make difficult decisions. I can understand the need to err on the side of caution and understand the decisions made. But I just think we need far better communication to the general public and ideally we also need people to wear masks which have been approved.

Interestingly though, we are seeing very little said about gloves. How do we know that wearing masks is more effective than wearing gloves (assuming social distancing/ isolation etc)? We know surfaces can be contaminated for a significant period of time but no one seems bothered by being infected via touching surfaces anymore. It is just all about masks. The discussion just seems a little haphazard. Wearing some PPE but not all. It leads to situations where we have individuals walking into a supermarket with full PPE.

I guess I am quite frustrated by everything. I want us to be led by clear science, but at the same time, I realize this isn't always possible and you need to be conservative. As I said this is extremely frustrating. I also don't want us to live in a society where wearing PPE becomes the norm. I would much rather we come up with engineering solutions to reduce pollution or better education to stay at home when ill etc. I do worry a lot that these sort of policies to wear masks will become the norm but I guess this worry isn't really important right now.



I agree, I think this is a good idea. Better for the UK to now have two meetings a week.

I have read quite a bit about masks in the past as i lived in Asia for a few years where they are common and far better understood. The West is just getting to grips with the idea. It's fairly well known over there that they don't do anything to prevent you catching anything, and may even make it more likely because they encourage you to touch your face, but they do help in preventing you spreading what you do have. This is why surgeons wear them.

In Italy it is law to wear them because the government wants to stop spread from people who don't show symptoms or know they have the virus. Still, when I'm walking miles away from anywhere, i just keep it on my chin in case the police drive past.


Actually, yeah, BAME demographics isn’t the issue here. This is about testing. Uk testing of mild/community cases has been practically non-existent from day one. So their mortality rates base on confirmed cases will be higher across the board.

I know there’s been a big severity bias in Italy too but they ramped their testing up and up, over the course of the epidemic so must be getting a lot of milder cases by now, right? Those milder cases will inflate the total case number, without adding to the death toll.

A little bit maybe, but taking the 10 day current average time from symptoms to death, we still have a ~10% fatality rate. At one point it was up closer to 20%. 3,500 people tested positive 10 days before we posted 919 deaths.

Tests are up to around 60,000 per day but there is still no widespread testing of asymptomatic patients available to my knowledge.
 
People who are asymptomatic are unlikely to ever get tested. People with mild symptoms will probably never goto hospital and get tested.
There's a lot of room for people who will get it and never be tested. Especially in the UK.
For sure, but do we think the UK have only caught 4.5 % of their cases?
 
Does anyone else think that it's time for them to knock these daily updates on the head, or just me?

It's becoming a hindrance now. At the beginning, even as someone who hates them it was a welcome thing to see - there was info to relay, things to tell us.

Now, there's nothing to tell us - it's just the same three helmets stood there repeating the same answers to the same questions:

"we're not ending lockdown yet"
"no vaccine this year"
"we're seeing improvements but not enough yet"
"no we aren't lying about PPE"


This is no longer helpful, if anything I think it's starting to proper piss off a large portion of society who are fed up with being hit around the head with the same information at 5pm every day. A daily reminder of how shit their life is and that it isnt going to get better just yet. "And now we have your daily reminder that your life might well be coming to an end...."

Feck off with it - do it twice a week. Once on a Tues (usually the worst day in terms of numbers) and once on a Fri to summarise any developments that have occurred that week.
Yeah or just do them when they have something new or important to say, then people will definitely tune into the ones that are on. Maybe minimum once a week if there hasn't been one.
 
If the mortality figures from France are accurate (0.53% of all cases are fatal), that means about 3 million people in the UK have caught the disease (which amounts to about 5% of the population). I think that's a reasonable guesstimate, given the number of people I personally know who've caught it.

If the doubling rate were to go up to every 3 weeks, it'd only take 4 months to get to 48 million infected. I really don't think that eventual herd immunity is out of the question (given that covid-19 will be with us for at least 18 months). You can't lockdown totally for the full duration, so the virus is going to continue to proliferate.
0.53 of France's population is 355,000 dead people.

Herd immunity either requires 11-70 million dead, depending on what Ro and HIT ends up being, or a vaccine.
 
There are people who legitimately has no savings and no money to buy delivery food. It's all good to be sitting in an ivory chair saying you should do this and that but in some parts of the world staying home means cramped in a 2x2 rooms with no entertainment.
Okay? I'm well aware of this. I'm not sitting in my 'ivory chair' to suggest that friends could deliver food essentials whilst you quarantine for 1 week. Regardless of their living conditions (which was never brought into question from my initial gripe about the guy, you've brought it up) if you have tested positive, you stay home for the week.

And before you complain about people needing entertainment in times of crisis imagine living in that condition with no savings, no cable tv, no books, no high speed internet, no pc. Just probably a smart phone and lets see how long your sanity last.
Why are you bringing this up? I think you're completely missing the point of my initial post. Positive? Stay home. Feel OK? Of course you can go out for exercise, walks, food shops etc, but there's no need to do it in a full fecking hazmat suit and gasmask.

Now I'm not saying they're right to do whatever they want. But i can emphasize with their situation. We can vilify people going beach partying but there are lots of gray areas as well
Again, my initial post was about a man going food shopping with his wife in full hazmat suit and gasmask. The guy wasn't out partying or anything, I don't know why you're going down this tangent.
 
I don't understand people who wear facemasks in their car while driving alone (and they're not delivery men or the like).

Doesn't it get annoying to wear it more than you need to?
 
I don't understand people who wear facemasks in their car while driving alone (and they're not delivery men or the like).

Doesn't it get annoying to wear it more than you need to?
We have to in our Comune, the Mayor has made it compulsory - and everyone's on their own in their cars. It's daft. I even have to put the mask on to walk across the road to the bins, and there's no-one around.
 
I have read quite a bit about masks in the past as i lived in Asia for a few years where they are common and far better understood. The West is just getting to grips with the idea. It's fairly well known over there that they don't do anything to prevent you catching anything, and may even make it more likely because they encourage you to touch your face, but they do help in preventing you spreading what you do have. This is why surgeons wear them.

TL: DR: Are the general public using PPE to avoid extreme cases which they may find themselves in or are we actually using it because these cases occur quite frequently?

I don't fully understand your comment that masks don't prevent you from catching the disease. Respirators stop both inhalation and exhalation of particles/droplets. Surgical masks prevent exhalation of droplets and yes, they would prevent an infectious people from spreading the disease. I think what you are saying is that if everyone in the general public wore surgical masks, there is no need for respirators because there wouldn't be any droplets in the air to breathe in anyway, which I do agree with. I wasn't trying to dismiss this point in my earlier post and I am sorry if it came across that way.

The first point I tried to make was more about just how necessary is it for the entire general public to wear masks? There is already a wealth of research which shows how droplets disperse and evapourate. It isn't clear to me though why surgical masks are truly necessary in the first place. This is because I do not understand how often conditions occur where the droplets exhaled from an infected person (who is not wearing a mask) remain both suspended in the air and do not evaporate quickly. To avoid this scenario requires the need for a mask, but the effectiveness of the masks worn by the general public then really depends on how often this scenario occurs. If the scenario hardly ever occurs, then one could argue the masks aren't really that effective at all in terms of limiting the overall spread.

As I said above, I do understand the need to err on the side of caution but we shouldn't stop studying or understanding the science.

The second main point I made was that so much emphasis is made on masks and we don't really know if they are significantly better for the general public than wearing gloves, or if it is preferable for the general public to wear both or maybe it is better for the general public to wear just gloves. It broadly follows the same argument as above. In essence are we just using PPE to avoid extreme cases or are we actually using it because these cases occur quite frequently? The science isn't clear to me here. My personal feeling is that the cases tend towards the extreme rather than the norm but its just an opinion.

I don't buy into this argument that just because Asian countries wear masks they have been significantly better off or they "better understand" them. I don't doubt it has helped, but again, there are several factors such as using apps to trace people and forced isolation. My personal opinion is that the significant reasons these countries have been better off is a lot to do with previous experience with dealing with virus outbreaks, the app which tracks users and the lockdown measures. I think in the case of the app and lockdown it has been enforced more strictly than what would probably be allowed in western cultures, I may be wrong though.
 
I have stopped watching in general to be honest. I just read the summaries online which are basically identical every day, maybe a different helmet's name every other day.

I usually get home from my hike and find my parents looking like they'd like to cry after seeing it. I keep tellign them to stop watching it because there is nothing new to hear, but oh well.

The graphs are a bit pointless being shown every day, ultimately it's only being used to re-inforce the discipline measure of lockdown.

Anyway today's deaths:

514 in England (Hospitals)

17 in Wales

58 in Scotland.
 
We have to in our Comune, the Mayor has made it compulsory - and everyone's on their own in their cars. It's daft. I even have to put the mask on to walk across the road to the bins, and there's no-one around.

Seems overkill, I imagine anyone you share a car with would be living with you.
 


Yeah that's got lost in the underlying health issues. These people weren't going to drop dead next week or the week after in most cases. Sad to see 10 years life just been taken away in a week or two.
 
We have to in our Comune, the Mayor has made it compulsory - and everyone's on their own in their cars. It's daft. I even have to put the mask on to walk across the road to the bins, and there's no-one around.

I don't understand people who wear facemasks in their car while driving alone (and they're not delivery men or the like).

Doesn't it get annoying to wear it more than you need to?

Sadly this is what I feared. Wearing masks needlessly for situations that don't warrant them. I agree with both of you, in the situations you describe there doesn't appear to be any need to wear them.

What I suspect has happened is the governments issued a blanket law which just made them compulsory to wear everywhere, to avoid the alternative scenario where they list each and every situation where they are necessary. It is understandable why they have done the former and not the latter.
 
A pathologist who announced Covid19 to be serious way before our politicians and WHO admitted it was going to be went into detail about the flaws of the current Hydroxychloroquine studies.

Interesting listen actually.

 
I think it's an issue with the guidelines from WHO as well. They will be underpinned by scientists who will be giving the best scientifically backed advice they can as of the time. As the science and knowledge of the virus improves this advice will change.

In the 24 hour news cycle this has got translated as being incorrect information and being slow, but it is just the way science works using the information available at the time. WHO were never going to tell the world to stop in December / January based on snippets of information and with lab results being investigated but hindsight is now being used to say this was wrong.

The media is so black and white with their reporting but something like this will always be progressive advice as the knowledge of the virus builds over months and the years to come.

Yes I agree, the story is unfolding only as fast as the science can be developed, which is not fast enough for the 24/7 news cycle. Its the same with procurement of PPE and other matters where there were no mass production lines already in place, or the logistics of procurement that can keep up with the demands of a pandemic. The ability to provide our own PPE and similar needs is something the Government will have to face afterwards, as unfortunately this is not the last pandemic we can expect.

However the need to 'feed the cycle' means that broadcasters, presenters, news type media formats are all trying to find a different angle to play up and grab the viewing stats. Unfortunately this seems to always be from a hindsight perspective and is at times unjust on people under pressure on their watch who for the most part cannot spin the wheel any faster.
 
Sadly this is what I feared. Wearing masks needlessly for situations that don't warrant them. I agree with both of you, in the situations you describe there doesn't appear to be any need to wear them.

What I suspect has happened is the governments issued a blanket law which just made them compulsory to wear everywhere, to avoid the alternative scenario where they list each and every situation where they are necessary. It is understandable why they have done the former and not the latter.
On the subject of masks...i have seen some pretty appalling behaviour by men of a certain age wearing masks in the supermarket.

One was wearing a full acrylic face mask with side filters - straight out of "contagion" film - and he was literally just barging people out of the way so he could get his few items and leave.

I've also lost count of the number of men I've seen wandering aimlessly through the shops wearing a mask but whistling at the top of their vocal strength - spraying the inside of their mask with sputum and god knows what. So I'm concerned about some people seeming to get a false sense of security behind a mask. Then again, plenty of people seem to be able to wear a mask and NOT be a massive idiot.
 
I’ve just seen on the BBC that Sweden have announced a much bigger increase in cases than normal and also withdrew speculation about how many people have got the disease after admitting they made mistakes with the science
 
I’ve just seen on the BBC that Sweden have announced a much bigger increase in cases than normal and also withdrew speculation about how many people have got the disease after admitting they made mistakes with the science
They already have higher per capita numbers than all other Scandinavian countries. Was only a matter of time until this would come out.
 


Edit: The official totals are messed up.

Yesterday, 18,100
Today, 18,738 but +616 should make 18,716.

Not sure if this happened before and they just add in some other deaths from nurses or is Patel doing the adding up today?
 
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A pathologist who announced Covid19 to be serious way before our politicians and WHO admitted it was going to be went into detail about the flaws of the current Hydroxychloroquine studies.

Interesting listen actually.



Could you summarize what he is saying?
 
I’ve just seen on the BBC that Sweden have announced a much bigger increase in cases than normal and also withdrew speculation about how many people have got the disease after admitting they made mistakes with the science

Here is the article and further links:

Sweden has seen its confirmed cases of Covid-19 jump from 16,004 to 16,755. The rise was much larger than in recent days, during which Sweden’s Public Health Agency had been cautiously celebrating a flattening of cases.

The agency's deputy state epidemiologist Anders Wallensten said the majority of the new cases were in Stockholm. Increased testing of healthcare workers could be a factor, he said, but scientists were looking into other potential reasons.

The agency also adjusted an earlier estimation that one-third of Stockholm residents will have been infected by the virus by 1 May, which was featured in a report released by the agency earlier this week and withdrawn after officials admitted errors in calculations.

“I don’t think this should be looked upon as something that is representative of Swedish statistics in general,” Wallensten told the BBC from the news conference via video link. “It was a mistake, I think many people understand that we are working hard these days... unfortunately this was not spotted before it went out.”

He said it was “too early to say” how much of an impact asymptomatic infection rates and the subsequent potential for immunity would have on the potential to lift social-distancing recommendations in Sweden in the near future, in comparison to places which have endured stricter measures.
[source]