You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker.

Thanks for downloading this edition of the program. I do hope you enjoy it.

Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest today is a Swedish

epidemiologist who's been thrust into the international spotlight over the last couple of months,

thanks to his determination not to join the scientific consensus on the most effective emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Anders Tenier told the Swedish government not to impose a lockdown. Better, he said,

to introduce softer restrictions and guidelines for the general population, keeping schools and

businesses open while protecting the most vulnerable and maintaining the capacity of the health

service. Critics, including some

Swedish scientists, predicted disaster, an overwhelming rate of infection and death. In fact,

Sweden has suffered many more COVID deaths than its Scandinavian neighbours, which imposed more

draconian measures. But it has maintained a degree of

normality, notably absent, in many other countries. So, is this a story of admirable wisdom and

public policy maturity, or of cavalier irresponsibility.

Well, and as Tengel joins me now from Stockholm, welcome to Hard Talk.

Thank you.

Let's begin with the latest picture in Sweden. Your death figures every day from COVID-19, they go up, they go down, sometimes by quite significant margins.

It's hard to get a real sense of whether you are really in control of the spread of COVID-19

in Sweden or not. What do you say? Yeah, we know that the death toll is a bit complicated

to follow because the registration of deaths is sometimes a few days late.

So what we do is that we now collect data on actual date of death.

And we do it in that way that we don't look too much at the last 10 days because we know they are very unsure.

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