How to evaluate the success of the COVID-19 measures implemented by the Norwegian government by analyzing changes in doubling time

Biljana Stangeland

In Norway and Denmark, the first cases of COVID-19 were confirmed on the 26 th of February, with Iceland following a few days later 2 . Although Finland and Sweden reported one case each a few weeks earlier, new cases began to increase parallel to Norway and Denmark from the 26 th of February. Unlike some central European countries, such as France, Germany and the UK, which reported moderate spreading of COVID-19 during February, the number of cases in Scandinavian countries had grown rapidly from the very start ( Figure 1A ). By the beginning of March, Iceland and Norway were topping the European statistics with the highest infection rates (number of confirmed cases per number of inhabitants) 3 . Two weeks later, these two countries were topping the global statistics together with Italy, Switzerland and Spain with some of the highest infection rates 4 .