From the outset, Denmark has been one of the countries that has best managed the epidemic. Its fatality rate is lower than that of its neighbors, especially Sweden, and is among the most modest on the continent. The authorities contained the variants that, like Delta, have caused havoc in Spain and other countries, and the vaccination rate is good. The sum of factors has led the government to announce something striking today: the end of all restrictions in September.
How. The news broke a few days ago: Denmark will no longer consider the covid a “socially critical” disease as of September 10. The immediate consequence is a return to normalcy. To the normality of yesteryear, not the “new normal” experienced by France and other countries. “The government promised not to maintain the restrictions beyond what is necessary, and we are at that point now,” argued Health Minister Magnus Heunicke during the announcement of the decision.
Denmark will thus end 18 months (18 months) of restrictions.
The process. The authorities, yes, reserve the right to recover them in case the situation worsens drastically. For the moment, the end of the measures suspends automatic confinements when a threshold of contagions is registered in certain regions or the obligatory nature of the vaccination or immunity passport as a tool for access to leisure. Yes will remain monitoring measures, such as mass testing, virus sequencing (very successful in Denmark) or sewage analysis. Watchers, yes, but without restrictions.
For the case at hand, what is relevant is this: the coronavirus is no longer “socially critical”, so the legal and legal bases that enabled those extraordinary measures no longer exist. What prevents sustaining them over time. It is an unprecedented situation since March 2020.
The situation. What data has led to this situation? On the one hand, vaccination. Denmark has fully immunized 71% of its population (compared to 70% in Spain, 59% in Germany, 45% in Japan or 27% in Australia) and has administered a dose of at least 75% (Spain is in 77%). To this we must add the containment of mortality: Denmark has registered only 2 deaths per million inhabitants in the last week, a prolonged trend since March; Spain, for its part, has risen to 17 / million per week after falling for months. France (11), the United Kingdom (12), or the United States (23) are worse off.
The future. In other words, the overwhelming majority of the Danish population is already immunized and the number of deaths per day attributable to the coronavirus is frequently 0, and it has been that way for many months. Hospitalizations have plummeted from last year, although they have risen in recent weeks. Fewer and fewer people die from covid or end up in hospital from covid. The social incidence of the disease, the urgency that led to massive lockdowns and restrictions, is over. Or at least it’s very close to ending.
Others. In this sense, Denmark marks the future of the rest of the countries. It is true that the United Kingdom, Spain and France are suffering acute spikes in infections during the final stretch of the summer, but also that deaths have not grown in proportion as they did in the rest of the waves. The vaccines have worked and have laid the groundwork for a real “normalcy,” one in which the coronavirus no longer mortgages public life. Although for a large part of the leaders and the population the perspective still seems psychologically distant today.
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