Sweden’s Coronavirus Approach Doesn’t Pay Off for the Economy

Sweden and Norway took very different approaches to controlling Covid-19, with the latter swiftly adopting strict lockdown controls and ramping up testing, while the former attempted to combat the virus by using mainly voluntary, non-regulatory social distancing measures.

Yet Sweden’s strategy hasn’t paid a clear dividend in supporting growth: The economy took a lesser hit than most in the first quarter, but monthly GDP-data and daily activity indexes show growth has been slow to recover after that. Meanwhile, with cases under control Norway was able to relax controls and activity has rebounded rather strongly.