Helsingin Sanomat leads with an Anders Tegnell interview in which Sweden’s leading epidemiologist sticks to the same line he has followed throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
To summarise, he said that Sweden’s policy of trying to slow, but not stop, Covid-19 was the right course of action and that coronavirus will be with us for the foreseeable future.
If a vaccine comes it will help manage the disease, but not eradicate it, and will primarily assist in protecting those most vulnerable to severe complications.
Tegnell did admit to two failings, however. Firstly, Sweden did not protect its older people well enough, leading to a higher death toll. Secondly, Sweden struggled to source personal protection equipment and has no centralised National Emergency Supply Agency or emergency legislation mandating pandemic preparedness, unlike Finland.
Tegnell’s country has ‘lived in peace for a long time’, says HS, and he says they could use lessons from Finland on how to prepare for emergencies.
Testing times
Coronavirus testing has been in the spotlight recently, with long waits for a test and results causing problems especially in the Helsinki region.
During the pandemic children must be tested when they have a cold, and cannot go to school or daycare until they have a negative result. Workers can’t go to work with mild symptoms, meaning they have to stay home.
Aamulehti looked at the impact on workers and employers. Tampere University hospital said that on one day, twenty nurses in the intensive care unit were off either because they were sick or caring for poorly children.
In Tampere’s daycare centres some 30 percent of staff have been off recently, causing problems in the smooth running of the service.
AL also asks the service sector union PAM what the impact is on low-paid workers.
They have ‘little good advice’, according to the paper. Parents are entitled to four days off to care for sick kids, but it may be paid or unpaid depending on the sectoral agreement.
Stadium complaints
On the day Helsinki’s Olympic Stadium reopens with a match in football’s National League between the women of PK-35 and HJK Helsinki, Iltalehti has a column questioning the wisdom of the renovation.
The column asks whether it might have been better to remove the athletics running track from the stadium, to expand capacity and allow a retractable roof to be installed.
The current roof has pillars which block a large part of the pitch for people sitting behind them.
An athletics-free facility would also have meant the stadium would be eligible to host big international football games, for example fixtures in the European Championships.
At present, the 300 million euro renovation has left the ground too small for that.
The column suggests that athletics had too big a say in the plans, and that the sport could easily have made do with Ratina Stadium in Tampere, which is also closer to the athletics heartlands.