© Peter Kadhammar/Aftonbladet
State epidemiologist Anders Tegnell enjoying a beer while working on his laptop at an outdoor restaurant in Stockholm
Days after he appeared to admit to flaws in Sweden's outlier coronavirus strategy, the country's state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell has doubled down in an interview with the
The Telegraph, saying he is confident Swedes are building immunity and warning his Nordic neighbours that is too early to claim success.
"It's part of the work," Tegnell said of the heavy coverage Sweden's strategy, and as a result its high death toll, has received in the international media. "That's the course we have decided to take in Sweden. And I'm quite happy to tell people about it."
Tegnell faced a cascade of headlines on Wednesday after
an interview on Swedish radio in which he said that, in hindsight, the best strategy might have been "something between what Sweden has done and what the rest of the world has done."
He backtracked later that day, saying that he was not suggesting that Sweden should have closed schools, bars, restaurants, or workplaces, or indeed imposed any of the restrictive lockdown measures imposed elsewhere in Europe.
"That interview was unfortunately
very wrongly put together and very wrongly advertised," he said. "What I said ... was that after this, we're going to do a lot of evaluation, and of course, there are going to be things we did in Sweden that we think we did right, and there are things in other countries that are also going to be proven right."
The qualities which have transformed Tegnell from an unknown civil servant into one of the stars of the global pandemic - a gift for communication, calm good humour, and impressive sang-froid - have never been put to the test as they have over the past fortnight.
Comment: From Cary, North Carolina, yesterday: