Somalian man deported from Sweden without legal basis

Sweden’s Parliamentary Ombudsman (Justitieombudsmannen, JO) has criticised the Police Authority and the Migration Agency for wrongfully deporting a man from Sweden.

The man was held in custody for 13 days and in August 2019 he was deported to Somalia. This despite the fact that the deportation order had expired before the man was taken into custody, an error caused by the wrong date having been registered in the Migration Agency’s system.

The Ombudsman writes that authorities should have double checked this, and that the man was held and deported without any legal basis, which it slammed as “completely unacceptable”.

Swedish vocabulary: completely unacceptable – fullständigt oacceptabelt

Covid-19 patients increase in Sweden’s intensive care units

The week of Christmas started with the number of Covid-19 patients in intensive care units across Sweden rising to 88 patients, reports Swedish news agency TT, the highest since the week of Midsummer’s Eve in late June.

At the time, the number was on the decrease, but now it’s instead increasing – up from 62 Covid-19 patients in intensive care last Monday.

The number of new Covid infections is also increasing in Sweden. It usually takes around 11 days from the point of infection for a person to get so ill that they require intensive care.

Swedish vocabulary: intensive care – intensivvård

Sweden orders 4.1 million doses of new Covid-19 vaccine

Sweden has ordered 4.1 million doses of the Covid vaccine produced by US company Novavax, which was approved by the European Medicines Agency and the EU Commission on Monday.

But vaccine coordinator Richard Bergström told TT that he did not think all of those doses would arrive immediately. “If we get 100,000 doses in the first quarter I’m happy,” he said.

Novavax is a protein-based vaccine, which is different from the mRNA vaccines by Moderna and Pfizer, and the viral-vectored vaccines by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson (Jansen). Unlike the slightly newer methods, the method used for Novavax has been tried and tested before – vaccines against both hepatitis B and human papillomavirus use similar techniques.

Swedish vocabulary: different – annorlunda

Hundreds of people die alone in Sweden and are left for months

In 2018-2020 more than 400 people lay dead in their homes for at least a month without anyone notifying authorities of their passing, according to a report by public broadcaster SVT.

Of those, 100 had died over three months before they were found, and at least ten had died a year earlier.

In 2019, a debate about Sweden’s high number of single households and loneliness was sparked after a man was found dead in a Stockholm apartment after over three years. Earlier this year, another man was found dead, with unopened post suggesting he may have lain there two years.

Swedish vocabulary: loneliness – ensamhet