The COVID-19 epidemiological evolution throughout the pandemic in Sweden between March 1, 2020 and September12, 2021. The data is expressed as official number of positive cases per 100000 per Km² of relevant population density. The Swedish population (10,1 million) has reached its 60% immunity threshold by February 16, 2021. Despite the implementation of relatively light non-pharmaceutical interventions (primarily based on recommendations rather than the use of enforcement based on declaration of emergency) in Sweden, the country's COVID-19 epidemiology was not much worse than in other countries relying on strict, often oppressive and severely restraining public health measures. Sweden shares much similarity in the second COVID-19 pandemic wave profile with Germany, accompanied with much more favourable fatality rate than the German rate.

The Swedish and German COVID-19 incidence profiles are highly and significantly correlated.

The Swedish COVID-19 incidence profile plotted together with its corresponding infection fatality ratio (IFR) for the pandemic between March 22, 2020 and June 6, 2021.

At the beginning of the pandemic the apparent COVID-19 mortalities appeared very high due to a number of unrelated factors such as, the unfamiliarity with the novel disesease resulting in late diagnosis or misdiagnosis, lack of initial testing, which artificially inflated the equation numerator resulting in large mortality value in addition to some initial mishandling of severe cases due to overwhelming of the medical system. This region of the graph (blue dots) by no means reflects the true COVID-19 morbidity.

The Swedish COVID-19 infection fatality rate shows a typical scatter plot profile with consistent drop throughout the epidemic as the Swedish population continues attaining its herd immunity against SARS-CoV-2 virus. The Swedish IFR is comparable to COVID-19-related mortality in Canada, i.e. consistently fluctuating around 0.2% and below. Just for comparison, the IFR of a trivial seasonal flu has been estimated by the WHO at about 0.1%.

Data: WHO weekly reported SARS-CoV-2 virus positive cases.