Fighting Covid-19 Pandemic: Analysis of the Swedish Model vs. Lockdown Model

Turkistani, F.; Bin Sawad, A.

Many countries resorted to the lockdown model that includes shutting down all non-essential activities to avoid the spread of COVID-19. Comparatively, Sweden applied the herd immunity model. The aim of this study is to analyze the Swedish model compared to the lockdown model based in other countries to understand the impact of these models on public health, health economics and overall economy of the respective countries. Based on the findings, the paper aims to shed light on which model proves to be more effective to cope with the pandemic and provide recommendations for other countries to follow accordingly. Our methodology was a narrative review that synthesizes current literature obtained from searches on various databases, authoritative texts, and hand searches. While it is too early to determine the long term effects of both models, it seems that Sweden's herd immunity model is more effective considering aspects of overall public health, health economic factors, and the overall economy. The major cons of the Swedish model was a failure in controlling infection spread in elderly nursing homes, as half the death toll comprises individuals belonging to this community. While Sweden was able to soften the effect of COVID-19 impact on its economy without a lockdown, the manufacturing industry was impacted due to lack of availability of required parts to be supplied by other countries. Thus from our review, we found that Herd-immunity model is more effective, but it depends on other factors of the country such as population density, as it is not plausible for countries such as Spain, the US or Germany, which need to expose high numbers of people to COVID-19 to attain herd immunity.