In this post, we will continue to explore the COVID status in Europe, but in a different country, Sweden. Two key topics will be addressed, change in alcohol consumption during pandemic and COVID-19 cases, death and vaccination status in Sweden.
Data Description 📄
COVID -19 Survey Data
Survey data is obtained from Swedish COVID-19 Data Portal, it is publicly accessible and under MIT license. It is a survey done by 40,060 people from 21 different European countries, all the entries were done between April to July in 2020 after COVID-19 hit Europe. There are 39 variables and 40064 observations, data dictionary is shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: COVID-19 Survey 2020, Europe
Vaccination Data
There were two datasets used in this post and they were sourced from Our World in Data and European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, they are both open data sources. The ECDC dataset contains vaccination data for 30 European countries, there are 12 variables and 84000 observations and all data are up to date. A sub-set of the data will be used from Our World in Data, it contains 6 colmuns and 116345 observations Data dictionaries are as follows, Figure 2 & Figure 3:
Figure 2: Data Dictionary
Figure 3: Data Dictionary
Data Exploration 🔍
A COVID-19 Survey on Alcohol Consumption
A survey has been done to examine the impact of COVID-19 on people’s mental health and alcohol consumption in 21 European countries between April to July 2020 after COVID-19 hit Europe. Figure 4 shows the responses of 808 Swedes who participated in the survey and how they find the current situation of the spread of COVID-19. They were divided into 3 age groups, 18-34 years, 35-54 years and 55-98 years. As it can be seen from the graph, approximately 60% of the people from each group found the pandemic stressful, and this is not surprising. And you would probably think that this may cause an increase in alcohol consumption as people would turn to alcohol to cope with the stress.
However, Figure 5 tells a different story. Compare to some of the European countries like United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark, the Swedes seemed to consume less alcohol during the pandemic, with the majority of the people did not change their drinking habits and people who drink less were in the second largest group, only a small proportion of people consuming more alcohol. This pattern was more obvious in the younger cohorts, there was a large proportion of people who are aged between 18-24 years consume less more alcohol than the other age groups (see Figure 6). The restrictions implemented by the Swedish government have greatly reduced social gatherings where alcohol consumption usually was expected and often pressured to happen, and this is the reason for the reduction of alcohol use among the younger cohorts as they generally consume more alcohol in social events (Movendi, 2020). A research also found that during March - April 2020, alcohol consumption among Swedish adults and youth is the lowest in the EU (Nordic Alcohol and Drug Policy Network, n.d).
In contrast, there were quite a lot of people in the other 3 countries consumed more alcohol than pre-pandemic, especially in United Kingdom and Ireland, the most popular answer was “slightly more” and it was the second most answer for Denmark. One possible explanation for this diverging patterns could be the less restrict alcohol policies in the United Kingdom, the U.K government declares alcohol shops are essential businesses (Forbes, 2020), whereas in Sweden, there are more restrictive alcohol policies in place, such as, alcohol can only be purchased from a government owned liquor store and alcohol ban after 10pm etc.
Mental Health
Figure 4: Mental Health Survey Question
Drinking Behaviour
Figure 5: Alcohol Consumption Survey Question
Figure 6: Alcohol Consumption in Sweden, by Age
Current COVID-19 Situation in Sweden
New Confirmed Cases and Deaths
Sweden has recorded three waves so far, the two major ones were in the late 2020 to early 2021 and March to June this year and the number of confirmed cases per million people were the highest among its neighbouring countries, Germany, Norway, Denmark and Finland, as shown in the Figure 7. The main reason for this would be the Swedish government’s soft touch approach on dealing with the virus among the European countries, it has drawn worldwide attention and criticism, even scientists called for changes to their covid strategy (ABC news, 2020), and when the third wave hit, Sweden had already opted against lock downs, face masks, instead relying on mostly voluntary measures (Reuters, 2021). The graph also shows the numbers are rising again since July this year, but the increase in confirmed cases is not yet significant, let’s hope the vaccination can be of assistance in flatting the curve.
Furthermore, we can also see from Figure 7 that the daily number of deaths per million people in Sweden seems relatively low in comparison with its daily cases, but this could be deceiving. If we take the daily numbers and calculate the cumulative sum of deaths, Sweden again, is well above its neighbours. Its death toll has been increasing drastically than other countries since the beginning of the pandemic, see Figure 8. For a country that only have 10 million population, one-eight of the population in Germany, this is very concerning. Watch a video about Swedish COVID strategy below.
Figure 7: Daily Confirmed Cases per Million People
Figure 8: Accumulative Daily Deaths
Vaccination
After a year since the coronavirus emerged, the first vaccines developed by the global effort started being distributed around the world in the late 2020. Sweden began their vaccine programme on the 27th Dec after the approval of Pfizer, Figure 9 shows the three major types of vaccines administered in Sweden, the most type vaccine administered is Pfizer, followed by Moderna and AstraZaneca which has been discontinued in March following reports of abnormal blood clotting in recipients.
source: The Local. A sports hall in Stockholm’s Rinkeby suburb has been transformed into a vaccination hub.
Figure 9: Type of Vaccines Administered in Sweden
By September this year, Sweden has reached approximately 60% of the population fully vaccinated and almost 70% that had one dose, as shown in Figure 10, total of 6,131,967 people out of 10 million population are fully vaccinated and the numbers are still increasing. Despite the fact that the Swedish COVID approach was not the best, but their vaccine roll out is a winner. The deaths rate for the third wave was much lower than the second wave with lock downs shunned weaker quarantine rules and masks banned and it has been maintain at a similar level.
Figure 10: Accumulative Vaccines Administered
Sweden’s vaccine roll out consists of 4 phases, phase 1 is for people who live in care homes for elderly, who have at-home care and who live with home, phase 2 is for people who are aged 65-69, phase 3 is for people are aged 60-64 and phase 4 is for other adults aged 18-59, oldest first (The Local, 2021). Figure 11 shows the timeline of fully vaccinate people in each age group, I calculated the cumulative sum of the weekly numbers, so it shows a trend of how the vaccination roll out progresses. As it can be seen from the graph, the seniors groups were vaccinated first followed by the younger groups. A Stockholm based research shows that the effects of vaccinating two of the most vulnerable groups in Sweden successfully reduced the infection rates and deaths (Mestrovic, 2021). This has proved again that vaccination is definitely effective at helping protest against the virus.
Figure 11: Weekly Accumulative Number of Fully Vaccinated People
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Citation
For attribution, please cite this work as
Yang (2021, Sept. 12). Y | MY: Change in Alcohol Consumption during Pandemic and An Update on COVID-19 in Sweden 🇸🇪. Retrieved from https://etc5523-2021.github.io/blog-myan0065/posts/2021-09-12-covid-in-sweden/
BibTeX citation
@misc{yang2021change,
author = {Yang, Jaffie},
title = {Y | MY: Change in Alcohol Consumption during Pandemic and An Update on COVID-19 in Sweden 🇸🇪},
url = {https://etc5523-2021.github.io/blog-myan0065/posts/2021-09-12-covid-in-sweden/},
year = {2021}
}
