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COVID-19

Sweden tightens Covid-19 testing guidelines for international arrivals

Everyone who has visited a non-Nordic country in the last week before travelling to Sweden is urged to get tested for Covid-19 as soon as possible after arriving.

Published: 30 November 2021 18:01 CET
Sweden tightens Covid-19 testing guidelines for international arrivals
File photo of a Covid-19 testing station at Stockholm's Arlanda Airport. Photo: Claudio Bresciani/TT

Sweden on November 30th stepped up its Covid-19 testing recommendations for travellers following spread of the new Omicron variant of the coronavirus in several countries.

Now, all travellers who have been to a country other than Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland in the week before travelling to Sweden are recommended to get a Covid-19 test as soon as possible after arriving, preferably the same day, if possible.

These guidelines apply to both vaccinated and unvaccinated travellers, as well as those who have had Covid-19 in the last six months, and those who provided evidence of a negative test when entering Sweden. They do not apply to children aged under six.

In addition to this, everyone arriving in Sweden from South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia or Eswatini is urged to get a Covid-19 test on the day of arrival or as soon as possible, as well as a second test after five days.

Furthermore, all travellers from those countries should stay home for seven days upon arrival in Sweden, irrespective of vaccination status, whether they are experiencing symptoms or not. These recommendations also apply to children, regardless of age.

As before, everyone who gets symptoms of Covid-19 should get tested, regardless of whether or not they’ve been abroad.

By 6pm on Tuesday, the Omicron variant had been confirmed in three people in Sweden. The variant was first discovered by South Africa on November 9th, and may be more contagious than other variants, although there are still a lot of unknowns.

Member comments

  1. “Urged” to get tested? ONLY “urged”?!!

    And there’s nothing in the article to indicate where or how to get tested… or even where to look for such information. Do you (who wrote the article) expect everyone arriving from a foreign county to know what agency or website to contact? I don’t know, and I just came home from a trip to Sweden. Now I need to do some research.

  2. I agree that there was not much information anywhere regarding how to get tested, but I can contribute what I experienced when I flew back to Stockholm, Sweden. I arrived at Arlanda on Sunday 5 Dec morning, and the possibility for testing was provided upon exiting the arrival area (after going through the immigration and baggage collection).

    It was a swabbing area provided by 1177/Region Stockholm. When you get there you fill a form with the details they ask for including contact information. The staff there register you and provide you a swabbing kit with the instructions on how to do your swab, and where to deposit your sample when you are done. I got my results on Tuesday morning – it was an SMS to call a number for the result. When I called the provided number it was a recorded voice message in different languages saying that I do not have COVID-19, so it seems to be catered for international travellers. I hope that helps and gives some insight into how they covered this new testing recommendation.

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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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