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Sweden and Denmark plough billions into SAS rescue

Scandinavian airline SAS on Tuesday unveiled a plan to raise around 12 billion Swedish kronor ($1.3 billion or 1.1 billion euros) in new funds to deal with the impact of coronavirus.

Published: 30 June 2020 13:13 CEST
Sweden and Denmark plough billions into SAS rescue
Flight technicians prepare the last of 25 SAS aircraft for long-term parking at Oslo Airport in Gardermoen, amid the new coronavirus pandemic. Photo: Håkon Mosvold Larsen/NTB Scanpix / AFP
The plan will see the Danish and Swedish state, two of the three largest shareholders, increase their ownership from about 14 percent to 20 percent, and will result in a 14.25 billion Swedish kronor boost to the airline's equity. 
   
In mid-June, SAS said it needed 12.5 billion in new funding as part of its recapitalisation plan, and the government of Sweden said it was ready to inject five billion kronor into the company. The Danish government also announced it was willing to support the ailing airline but did not give a figure.
 
Carsten Dilling, chair of the SAS Board of Directors, said in a press release that the plan was “a balanced way forward given the magnitude of the recapitalisation and the conditional burden sharing measures”. 
 
Along with planned cost-cutting, he said the funding would enable the company to “withstand this crisis and return as a profitable and sustainable Scandinavian infrastructure provider”.

 
SAS said it does not expect demand for travel to return to pre-coronavirus levels before 2022.
 
“We expect demand to remain low both in 2020 and 2021. It won't be before 2022 that it is back again,” the airline's chief executive Rickard Gustafson told Sweden's TT newswire. “That's why we need this money.” 
 
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Like many airlines, SAS has been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic and announced in mid-March it was temporarily laying off 90 percent of its workforce.
   
Since then, the company has announced it will be cutting 1,900 full-time positions in Sweden, 1,300 in Norway, and 1,600 in Denmark, accounting for some 40 percent of the company's staff.
   
Shares in SAS were down more than 10 percent on the Stockholm stock exchange following the plan's unveiling.

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COVID-19

Public Health Agency recommends two Covid doses next year for elderly

Sweden's Public Health Agency is recommending that those above the age of 80 should receive two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine a year, once in the spring and once in the autumn, as it shifts towards a longer-term strategy for the virus.

Published: 23 December 2022 10:53 CET
Public Health Agency recommends two Covid doses next year for elderly

In a new recommendation, the agency said that those living in elderly care centres, and those above the age of 80 should from March 1st receive two vaccinations a year, with a six month gap between doses. 

“Elderly people develop a somewhat worse immune defence after vaccination and immunity wanes faster than among young and healthy people,” the agency said. “That means that elderly people have a greater need of booster doses than younger ones. The Swedish Public Health Agency considers, based on the current knowledge, that it will be important even going into the future to have booster doses for the elderly and people in risk groups.” 

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People between the ages of 65 and 79 years old and young people with risk factors, such as obesity, diabetes, poor kidney function or high blood pressure, are recommended to take one additional dose per year.

The new vaccination recommendation, which will start to apply from March 1st next year, is only for 2023, Johanna Rubin, the investigator in the agency’s vaccination programme unit, explained. 

She said too much was still unclear about how long protection from vaccination lasted to institute a permanent programme.

“This recommendation applies to 2023. There is not really an abundance of data on how long protection lasts after a booster dose, of course, but this is what we can say for now,” she told the TT newswire. 

It was likely, however, that elderly people would end up being given an annual dose to protect them from any new variants, as has long been the case with influenza.

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