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TODAY IN NORWAY

Today in Norway: A roundup of the latest news on Friday 

Find out what’s going on in Norway on Friday with The Local’s short roundup of important news.

Published: 26 November 2021 09:37 CET
Gol stave church.
Read about the government announcing a change to its infection control strategy and what health authorities have to say about current measures. Pictured is Gol stave church. Photo by Nick Night on Unsplash

Norway to announce a change in infection control strategy

Following weeks of rising coronavirus cases, Norway’s health minister Ingvild Kjerkol has said that the government will announce a change in infection control strategy. 

The minister said the change was coming after receiving a letter from mayors in western Norway saying that the current strategy was not working. 

READ MORE: The current status of the Covid-19 epidemic in Norway

“We are considering all measures at all levels now. The strategy that applied based on the reopening in September will be revised now. We no longer consider it pragmatic,” Kjerkol told public broadcaster NRK. 

“I announce a revision of this strategy, and then the Prime Minister will report to the Storting on Tuesday. Then we will make more assessments,” she added. 

In September, the previous government announced the return to normal everyday life with increased preparedness. 

Health authorities: Current measures not enough

The Norwegian Directorate of Health and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) believe that current measures to combat Covid-19 aren’t working, requiring a new infection control strategy. 

“It looks like the measures we have now are not sufficient to reverse the infection trend. This also has something to do with compliance, that enough people follow the advice,” Espen Nakstad, assistant director at the Norwegian Directorate of Health, told broadcaster TV2.

Along with the NIPH, the health authority has been working on new recommended measures, which they have passed on to the government. 

RS virus in Norway may have peaked

The outbreak of RS virus may have reached its peak in Norway, but the number of cases remains very high, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health has said. 

In its latest report on influenza, the health institute said that there was a decrease in the proportion of RS-virus positive samples in all Norwegian counties- except Innlandet, Nordland and Troms og Finnmark. 

The weekly report showed that influenza cases were quite low. However, it is still incredibly early in the flu season. 

2,970 new Covid-19 infections

On Thursday, 2,970 people tested positive for Covid-19, an increase of 544 on the same day the week before. 

Over the last seven days, an average of 2,375 cases have been registered. The corresponding average a week prior was 1,919. 

A graph showing the number of Covid-19 cases in Norway.
Pictured above is a graph showing the number of Covid-19 in Norway.

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TODAY IN NORWAY

Today in Norway: A roundup of the latest news on Monday

Earthquake near Bergen, perpetrators of Oslo shooting still at large, retail industry strike looms, and other news from Norway on Monday.

Published: 29 April 2024 07:08 CEST
Today in Norway: A roundup of the latest news on Monday

Mini-earthquake rattles Voss, outside Bergen 

An earthquake with a magnitude of 3.3 on the Richter scale rattled the municipality of Voss early on Monday morning, waking up many residents but appearing to do no actual damage. 

“We first received a message at 4.22am from a man in Vaksdal who had felt the earthquake. He described it as a clear shaking in the house and as a kind of rumbling,” Berit Marie Storheim, senior engineer at the Department of Geosciences at Bergen University, told the NTB newswire, adding that “3.3 is a small earthquake in the global context and it is not unusual in Norway.” 

She said that she and her colleagues did not expect any damage to buildings or other infrastructure but called on anyone who had felt the quake to register it at skelv.no. 

Norwegian vocabulary: jordskjelv – earthquake  

Perpetrators of shooting at Oslo’s Beirut Kebab still at large 

Oslo police said on Sunday that they were still looking for the men who shot and injured a man in his twenties at the Beirut Kebab kebab restaurant in the Grønland district of Oslo on Saturday night.

“We are investigating broadly, looking at several milieu, and we know that there is more than one perpetrator,” Maria Huseby Fossen, a police lawyer, told public broadcaster NRK.

The victim of the shooting has yet to be interviewed as he is till being treated for his injuries, but police have already interviewed several other witnesses and are seeking to obtain footage from security cameras.

Norwegian vocabulary: ingen pågrepet – no one arrested

Dury free shops may close if retail sector employees strike  

Thousands of members of the Handel og Kontor (HK), Parat and Negotia unions may go on strike from Tuesday if mediation launched on Sunday morning with the Federation of Norwegian Enterprise (Virke), one of Norway’s leading employer groups, is not successful.

The union’s deadline for progress in the talks is midnight on Tuesday night, after which they may mount strikes at building materials stores, grocery stores and duty-free shops, as well as shops run by Norgesgruppen and Coop.

Handel og Kontor has claimed that the strike could see duty free shops at Norwegian airports forced to closed, something the shops’ owners, the Travel Retail Norway joint venture, has denied. 

Norwegian vocabulary: mekling – mediation

Norway calls on West to support Arab peace plan in Gaza 

Norway’s foreign minister Espen Barth Eide on Sunday evening called for EU countries and the US to support a Gaza peace plan drawn up by Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, as representatives from Arab and Western countries meet in Riyadh on the sidelines of the regional meeting of the World Economic Forum. 

“The closest we have to a comprehensive peace plan is the one Arab countries are currently working on. It is important that we support this. It is simply better to have one plan than no plan,” Eide told Norway’s NTB newsire. “Recognition of a Palestinian state is not an end in itself, but a tool we can use once. When a country like Norway uses it, we must know that it can have an effect.” 

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell, British foreign minister David Cameron, German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry, Jordanian foreign minister Umin Safadi and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas are in in Riyadh for the meeting, along with Eide. 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Riyadh, but will not attend the meeting. 

Eide said that the idea that countries such as the US or Norway could somehow lead peace efforts in Israel and Palestine was past. 

“A country from the West cannot travel down and ‘make peace’, as we maybe let ourselves believe. It needs to be anchored in the region,” he told NRK. 

Norwegian vocabulary: forankrast – anchored

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