Sweden’s lockdown lite
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 11 July 2020
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Unlike its Nordic neighbours, Sweden never imposed a lockdown to stem the spread of coronavirus. Tim Harford speaks to statistician Ola Rosling to find out what the results have been.
Presenter: Tim Harford Producer: Jo Casserly
Picture: A woman wearing a face mask stands at a Stockholm bus stop where a sign reminds passengers to maintain a minimum social distance. Sweden 25 June 2020. Credit: EPA/ Stina Stjernkvist
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to More or Less. |
| 0:02.1 | We're the programme all about the numbers all around us in the news and in life, and |
| 0:06.3 | I'm Tim Haafard. |
| 0:08.5 | This week I'll be speaking to Swedish statistician Ula Rosling to find out how effective Sweden's |
| 0:14.5 | lockdown light has been in slowing the spread of coronavirus. |
| 0:19.3 | But first I have an update for you on More or Less's pet subject. |
| 0:23.2 | You guessed it, it's testing. |
| 0:24.8 | And when it comes to testing, if there's something strange in the neighbourhood, who |
| 0:28.7 | are you going to call? |
| 0:30.2 | Kate Lambel. |
| 0:31.2 | Kate, of course, was the producer of our marathon radio four series. |
| 0:35.9 | Hello, Kate. |
| 0:36.9 | You're making it away, would you? |
| 0:38.7 | Not quite. |
| 0:39.7 | No, so just remind us briefly why you have been looking into testing for the last however |
| 0:46.3 | many months. |
| 0:47.3 | So when our last series started all the way back in March, the UK government was having |
| 0:50.9 | quite a slow start with COVID-19 testing. |
| 0:54.2 | But in April they set themselves as really big target. |
| 0:57.0 | They said by the end of the month they wanted to be doing a hundred thousand tests a day. |
| 1:01.4 | And they said they achieved that target on the last day in April, just in time. |
| 1:06.5 | As if by magic. |
... |
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