anethum
Full time employment: Posting here.
- Joined
- May 26, 2012
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- 856
Given that the number of tests conducted per capita varies widely throughout the world, and the significant number of asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic individuals who may not get tested, it's not always useful to compare the percent infected individuals between countries, or between U.S. states.You are right. I should have said #confirmed cases when comparing the two vs deaths and hospitalizations. When comparing #cases to total population, Sweden is ~ .18% infected, while Norway is .14% and both have relatively low number of deaths based on their populations.
Nevertheless, I decided to try and find out how many people are getting tested in Norway & Sweden. I found the following figures:
For Norway as of April 27, 164,316 people have been tested in Norway.
For Sweden as of April 19, only 94,494 people had been tested. I extrapolated approx. 21,000 additional tests were likely conducted during the past week in Sweden, which would bring the total to about 115,500 tests.
It should also be noted that Sweden has nearly twice the population of Norway. Thus even though the percentage of people testing positive for coronavirus is 31% higher in Sweden than in Norway, it's likely that a lot more cases of infection in Sweden are not being caught compared to Norway.
It's also worth noting that at present, Sweden has one of the highest death rates in the world for COVID-19, and its rate is substantially higher than all of its Scandinavian neighbors.