Virus Shutters Nordic Schools as Number of Cases Hits 2,000
Denmark Shuts Down Schools, Sends Home Non-Critical Staff
(Bloomberg) --
Denmark and Norway are closing schools while large gatherings have been banned across the Nordic region and swathes of workers sent home, as the number of people contaminated by the coronavirus approaches 2,000.
“We’re in uncharted territory here,” Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said at an emergency press briefing convened late on Wednesday. “We’ve never tried anything like this before.”
Scandinavian governments are imposing emergency measures to isolate citizens in a frantic effort to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus. People have been told to stop shaking hands and hugging when they greet. Denmark is urging everyone who can work from home to do so.
The decrees came not long after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak to be a pandemic, and told governments to step up their efforts to fight the contagion. As the virus spread, both Sweden and Norway reported their first deaths.
“All private-sector employers are encouraged to ensure that as many employees as possible are able to work from home,” Frederiksen said. All state-sector employees are being forced to stay home, though emergency personnel will continue to perform their duties, she said.
Norway’s prime minister, Erna Solberg, said the country has never before introduced such strict peace-time curbs on the movement of its citizens.
“We all need to protect ourselves, in order to protect others,” Solberg said on Thursday. “We stand together, not with hugs and handshakes, but by keeping our distance.”
Sweden, which like its neighbors has banned large gatherings, won’t be closing schools amid concerns that doing so would force health-care workers to stay home and look after their kids instead of the growing number of coronavirus patients. In Finland, the government stopped short of invoking emergency powers which would have allowed it to close schools across the country.
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To help companies cope with the fallout of the virus, Denmark has agreed to about $20 billion in tax breaks. In Sweden, the government of Prime Minister Stefan Lofven is exploring an increasing palette of stimulus measures to shield exporters from any damage the virus causes to trade.
In Norway, authorities have said they expect a “relatively sharp increase” in the number of cases, while there are reports of paracetamol being rationed.
“We expect more hospitalization in the days and weeks ahead, and also gradually a higher number of intensive-care patients,” the Norwegian Institute of Public Health’s Director General Camilla Stoltenberg said at a press conference.
--With assistance from Mikael Holter, Veronica Ek, Charles Daly and Kati Pohjanpalo.
To contact the reporter on this story: Morten Buttler in Copenhagen at mbuttler@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tasneem Hanfi Brögger at tbrogger@bloomberg.net;Christian Wienberg at cwienberg@bloomberg.net
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