the mayor of brazil's largest city, sao paulo, says the health system is close to collapse as demand grows for emergency hospital beds to deal with covid—19. he said the city's public hospitals had reached 90% capacity. almost 3,000 people have died in the region from coronavirus. official figures from japan show that the world's third largest economy has gone into recession. as a result of the coronavirus crisis, the country is on course for its worst economic slump since the second world war as a result. the government has already announced a trillion—dollar stimulus package. a canadian military displayjet has crashed in a residential area in british columbia. one person has died and another is severely injured. the plane was part of the snowbirds demonstration team. it was taking part in a cross—country tour to salute canadians working to fight the coronavirus.

now on bbc news, it's hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. much of the world responded to the covid—19 pandemic with a lockdown strategy and now the focus is on finding a way out of lockdown without prompting a second wave of infection. could sweden provide a model? well, my guest today is sweden's chief epidemiologist, anders tegnall. now, he was the architect of a controversial no lockdown strategy, which continues to stir interest right across the world. has it worked?

anders tegnall in stockholm, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. let's begin with the latest picture in sweden. your death figures every day from covid—19 go up, they go down, sometimes by significant margins. it's hard to get a real sense of whether you are really in control of the spread of covid—19 in sweden or not. what do you say? yeah, we know that the death toll is a bit complicated because the registration of death is sometimes a few days late. so we now collect data on actual date of death and we do it in a way that we do not worry too much about the last ten days because we know they are unsure, a lot of things happening and they fill out every day.

instead, we look at two days before that and then we followed the trend much better and we have a clear declining trend. i thinkjust under 100 cases a day and now we are down to slightly more than 80 a day on the average. the trend seems to keep going that way. that trend is clearly very good news. but is not the brutal truth that you have had many more deaths in sweden than you would have had if, like your scandinavian neighbours, you had imposed an early and very strict lockdown policy? i think that is difficult to know. the death toll in sweden is mainly in the long—term facilities for long—term ill, elderly people and we had very much an unfortunate spread in those facilities in the way that some of the countries had, but not all our neighbours. why we had a spread in sweden and

not our neighbouring countries. that is something we are trying to investigate now. with respect, isn't that part of my point? that you probably would not have had that catastrophic spread of covid—19 through your care homes, particularly around stockholm, if you had run a more strict, a less open policy for the general population? yeah, i mean, these people meet many people, even if you have a lockdown, so you cannot isolate them. in that way, lockdown would not have stopped the spread into them and we can see now, when we are starting to look at these places, we see a decline in the incidences in those places, once we really get them to focus on basic hygiene procedures. let me ask you this. as the country's chief epidemiologist, the man, let us be honest, the man who, in many ways, is the architect of the swedish government's strategy

for coping with covid—19 — can you regard a situation in which your country has, getting on for almost 30,000 infections of covid—19 in the population, with a death toll, which is significantly higher than your neighbours, standing at around 3,500, can you regard that as success or do you have to acknowledge that in some ways, your strategy failed? yeah, that is true. when it comes to the death toll, this didn't work out the way we hoped it. 0n the other hand, the connection between our basic strategy in slowing down the spread, if that's really in the long run will affect the total death toll in the society or not. that is not clear yet. we know that our neighbouring countries by now have around 1% of the population who had some kind of immunity, has had the disease. the investigations we have had in sweden so far —

we have a major one going on that will give us a better answer — it points that we have at least ten, maybe 20 times higher level of immunity in the population, which means that we are much further into the spread than other countries, and if that means that other countries will reach similar death tolls to us or not, i think that's very difficult tojudge. an interesting answer because you are inviting me there to consider the long—term significance of this notion, this concept of herd immunity. now, your own government says that the strategy that you implemented, the more moderate, the less strict emergency response to covid—19 was not about establishing herd immunity, but you seem to be suggesting that actually it is about getting to that point where so many people in the general population have had covid—19 and, therefore, we can assume have some resistance to getting it again, that you have this concept of herd immunity in your population.

was that the working strategy or not? no, it was not. i'm just pointing out one way that shows that you cannot make this kind of easy comparison at this stage because the epidemic has hit different countries in many different ways. the point is really about comparisons with your nordic, scandinavian neighbours. because they took a different approach, they were much stricter in their lockdown, as you've acknowledged, and the death toll, denmark has just over 500, finland over 200 and norway just over 200. they are strikingly different from sweden's, and the point really is that they now feel they are in a position to ease their strict lockdowns, to bring some sense of normality back to their populations and to quote one of the senior ministers in denmark, they feel that there's "very little chance of a second spike in infections" because of what they have achieved. so they are as far along

the curve as you are, but they've prevented hundreds and hundreds of deaths that you failed to prevent. i don't understand what you mean that they are as far along the curve as we are. 0bviously they are not. if only 1% or 2% of their population has been infected, they are not very far along any kind of curve. but they are confident that because of measures that they took and the social distancing and the public consciousness that they now have, that the disease will not spread and will not kill the numbers that have been killed in sweden. and only the future can tell. if you look at similar kind of diseases, we have never really been able to stop anything. we can sometimes delay things. they have been successful in doing that, our nordic neighbours, but to stop them forever i do not think that's going to be possible with covid—i9, just as it has never been possible with flu or any other viral diseases in this way. we'll come back to your vision

of future in a moment, but i am very interested in the philosophical point that your approach has tested, and that is the notion of not conducting your emergency response through the heavy hand of government, through strict mandatory lockdown, but talking to your people, placing trust in your own population and saying to them, "we are relying on you voluntarily to adopt behaviours that we think will best control the spread of this disease." do you think your policy of trust has worked? yes, i really do. because we can really see that we have big impacts and that comes back to a comparison with other countries and so on. if we look at some statistics that we have, we can look at the travel patterns — travel during easter was only 10% of what it normally is,

showing that people really tried to minimise their social contact. we can also see that some of our other viral diseases like flu, which has the same kind of pattern every year, suddenly stopped in the middle of the pattern and disappeared. also, again, showing that social distancing really worked and you can see trains in sweden running at 10% of capacity, domestic flights are almost not running and so on so people really took this on in a way that is more or less equal to people and countries who did it by illegal measures. yours was a mandatory crackdown. in that sense do you think some governments, particularly in europe, where the lockdowns have been severe, have infa ntilised their populations and, therefore, when they release the brakes, people may not act in the responsible way that you say swedes continue to act. i don't know if i canjudge that, but i can say one very important thing for us is what you are alluding to and that is sustainability.

these kind of measures, voluntary measures, with a big understanding in a population of why we're doing this, have a much higher level of sustainability. we all know that this is something that we are going to have to handle for a long time and, as you said, our nordic neighbours now believe that they can handle it in the long term, going over to something which is fairly similar to what sweden is doing today. but we really need to then have sustainable solutions. and, sure, i mean, there are signs of a reaction in some countries that when you turn things free, then you really use your freedom to the maximum extent. here in sweden, even if people are getting slightly more mobile as we head into summer, we still have a great level of social distancing in place. let me, if i may, get a little personal with you. earlier i said you became seen

as the architect of a maverick policy, which went against the grain of the scientific consensus in many other parts of the world where scientists were backing very strict mandatory lockdowns. it did put you in the spotlight, notjust in sweden, but right around the world, and as the death toll has mounted in sweden, and you've been open about that, how has that affected you personally? do you feel any sense of personal responsibility for those lives lost? i mean, this is not my decision or anything like that. we are a big agency, i have my director who backs this whole thing... you are are a modest man, but i think you would accept that much of the groundwork and strategy and the thinking behind sweden's policy came from you, and it seems to me that that is quite a burden for you to bear when we see what has happened. i mean, of course, this death toll is highly regrettable.

it's a terrible thing that we are seeing. i think we have a number of explanations why this happened, not directly connected to our strategy. now, when we are investigating these long—term facilities, there are a lot of things that can be done to improve the quality of hygiene, other things there, and most likely would diminish the death toll over time in these facilities. it is highly regrettable that that was not seen by the people responsible before this happened, but it did happen and, of course, it's terrible. 0n the other hand, we're not too sure a strict lockdown would have changed so much. it didn't change very much in the netherlands, in the uk and many other places. what about the debate in the scientific community? it's very notable, i think it was pretty much 2,000 doctors, scientists, professors, learned people signed a petition calling on the government

to reverse your policy and impose stricter measures — that was back in late march, and even in april, on april 22, some very respected scientists in sweden wrote a piece condemning, "officials without talent," which undoubtedly included you, saying that the decisions were wrong and to quote one leading immunologist, cecilia soderberg—naucler, she said, "we are not testing, we're not tracking and the people behind this strategy are leading us to catastrophe." how did you cope with all that? yeah, i can cope with that because i know that of the other 40,000 scientists in sweden, the majority is realy behind us. we have an expert group that we talk to every week who are very much behind us, completely in line with what we're trying to do and we are really trying to the best we can under the circumstances we're in, that we are trying to sacrifice some of it to have an easier burden on the economy, that

is definitely false. the 2,000 was a big mixture of different kinds of scientists and the smaller group of 22 is not our leading scientists in the field. the leading scientist in the field is behind us. what about the public? so that doesn't worry me too much. the death toll definitely worries me, but that small group of scientists does not worry me. because you've had a lot of support. you have even had people putting tattoos of your face on their bodies and wearing t—shirts proclaiming their support for you. but you've had others, and i dare say some of those were the family members of people who have died, who have been very critical. that's tough. yes, but i think that also shows that the agency and the policy has strong support in the population. we have done several investigations, and not only us, many others have done investigations, and the level of people who are behind what we're doing is like 70—80%,

which is an incredibly high number for any kind of measure from a public health agency in sweden. and only like 5—10% think that we should think more about the health of the population. another 10—20% are worried about the economy. and i think that's — it's a great support for what we're doing, that the population is definitely behind us. and then we have some extremes, with tattoos and things like that, which i try not to think about too much. it must be a strange feeling when you see yourself on somebody else‘s body, i can imagine. but you say that you didn't do any of this — in terms of the strategy and the policy that you scientists came up with, and that the government adopted, you didn't do it for economic reasons. but surely the truth is that, when it came to the crunch, and making these big decisions, people at the top of government in sweden did want to keep the economy functioning as well as it possibly could. they wanted to avoid long—term damage, and surely that was a very important element in this strategy.

not the way we delivered it. i mean, we didn't do those calculations. 0n the other hand, we did calculations on the broader public health impact. i mean, when it comes to closing schools, there's a lot of science behind that closing schools does a lot of damage to children, especially children who are vulnerable already, from the beginning. being out of work is also very dangerous from a public health perspective. so i think you're onto something here. i mean, our strategy includes broader public health perspectives. there may be many others in other countries. when it comes to the economic consequences, that's on the government level, and of course they will make adjustments to the things we suggest, taking the economy into account. but it's definitely not our part of the development of this strategy. right, so when you look across europe and the world at other countries and the way they are doing things, and i'm thinking of where i am, the united kingdom, where the lockdown is still pretty much in place, with a very few minor easings of it, and schools are still closed, and there

is a very great debate about whether any schools beyond primary age will open before september — it seems they won't — are you saying that is just plain wrong, it's a mistake? it's getting the balance between tackling covid and wider public health and social issues — it's getting the balance wrong? yes, i mean, only the future can tell, and i think what is the science behind this and what is not the science behind dealings with covid—i9 is definitely not clear. i mean, not anybody can claim that they have the science that lockdowns are good and the more open strategy in sweden is wrong, because there is no science, really, supporting anything. what is supporting what we're doing in sweden is we're following a long tradition of how we work in public health. we are also taking into account the public health effect of closing schools and other things which would give you a lot of long—term problems in the area of public health,

and that needs to be taken into account when you close schools. and so not doing that, i think, would not be ethical and not be a correct public health way of working. i will tell you what is striking in this interview, and i would say honest on your part, is that you keep telling me that on many aspects of this covid—i9 response, the science isn't clear. i want to, in that context, bring you back to the notion of herd immunity. because you have said, you said itjust a few weeks ago, that you believe by the end of may that there will be a form of herd immunity in play in stockholm. i think you suggested that by then you could imagine that maybe 30% or 40% of the population will have had covid—i9, and will have, therefore, a form of immunity. but it seems to me you have no scientific evidence for that. you're not doing enough testing to know whether that 40% figure is real, and you also, frankly, don't know the science of covid—i9. you don't know that having had covid—i9 gives you any long—term immunity at all. so where is your science?

we are just now doing a major investigation in sweden, as they have done in other countries, taking a sample of the total population and looking at the level of immunity they are having right now, so we get that data. what we're basing it on so far is a few minor investigations showing levels between 10% and 15% of different smaller groups have immunity, which supports the modelling that's been done by two or three different scientists in sweden. and when it comes to immunity, just recently, i had a discussion with the top scientist on coronavirus and immunity in sweden, and everybody says of course there's immunity. we can measure antibodies, we can measure other aspects of immunity, and why should covid—i9 be different than all other infectious diseases? but what about these cases, dr tegnell, what about these cases

i read about from china to california of people who have had covid—i9, recovered, test negative after they recovered, and then two months later test positive again? apparently they have caught it again. that is not a real infection. i have just discussed this with the top people in sweden. some of them are what they call a recurrence. i mean, you can have part of this virus and carry it obviously for a very long time, which explains some of the cases. other cases were obviously contaminations when they were tested the first time. there is no, as far as they knew, and i really trust these people, there is no confirmed cases of somebody who really had the infection twice. we have a very good system of register in sweden. among all the cases we have had in sweden, not one of them have had it more than once. well, to be really sure, then, about how much immunity there is in the general population, you do need the antibody test. roche, the pharmaceutical giant in switzerland, has now developed an antibody test that the us, the eu, and now the uk governments

are all saying they approve of. is sweden intending to test pretty much everybody over the next few months? we are doing — as i said, we are doing a test of a sample of the population to look at the level of immunity in the whole population right now. the samples have been tested, a few of them have been random, but in the next week we'll be able to tell what's the level of immunity. and we're using a number of different methods to look at that, because there is a number of methods out there, and we have developed some ourselves, with the help of the top immunologist in sweden doing this. so, towards the end of next week, we can say better what level of immunity we have in the population. i want to end, if i may — we're short of time, dr tegnell. i'm sorry to interrupt, we're short of time. i just want to end with some thoughts about the future, because throughout this interview, you've indicated you don't think that, if we can call it the fight, the fight against covid—i9 will come to any sort of end until there is an effective vaccine

that is deliverable to the world's population. so we're talking, let's say, a year or 18 months at the best, in most people's view. in the meantime, how much normality can there be? if we take sweden as one of the more advanced countries, that's thought about this a lot, do you think that we, for example, can return before a vaccine to a world in which there is widespread travel, even between countries, where crowds can gather at music concerts or football stadiums, where hugs and handshakes can become routine again, where people do not have to wear facemasks on public transport, or has our life fundamentally changed for the long—term ? nobody knows the answer to that question. i think certain things we can be quite sure about. i think for a long time we're going to need to protect our elderly in different ways. because they are always going to be susceptible to this disease, and they are always going to have a very high death toll to it, unless we find a vaccine that will work in that part

of the population, which is not going to be easy, or a treatment, and that's not going to be easy either. when it comes to other things, this is not only one nation that can decide, about travel and so on. i think that we in sweden would feel rather confident to ease down on some of the things. maybe travelling around could be ok, maybe a few other things could be ok. if we sometime get an immunity test that works a bit better on the individual level, which they unfortunately don't do yet, we don't have enough experience on that, we can probably ease a few other things too. oui’ main concern now is really the elderly, who have been very isolated, and we need to find different ways of easing that isolation, because that will also affect our health, both in the short term and the long—term, and i think that's one of our main concerns right now. and i'm just very interested in one point. do you go out — every time you go out now, do you wear a facemask? nope, in sweden we don't wearfacemasks. in sweden, we stay home when we are sick. i think that makes a big difference.

anders tegnell, it has been fascinating getting your insights from sweden. thank you very much for being on hardtalk. thank you. hello. there is some wet weather and some warm weather in this weather forecast. first, most of the wet weather will be found across the northern half of the uk. further south, it'll be largely dry, and quite widely it'll become very warm for a time around the middle of the week. the end of the week will feel a bit different. it'll be cooler, windier and more unsettled for all of us. now, you can see frontal systems which will be pushing across northern areas over the next few days,

bringing cloud. yes, this cloud producing some outbreaks of rain, but it is to the south of those frontal systems that things will turn increasingly warm and increasingly sunny for just about all of us by wednesday. but, as far as monday goes, some rain to start off across northern scotland. that will increasingly become confined to the northern isles. the north of the mainland will brighten up, with some sunshine. we will see quite a lot of cloud persisting across southern scotland, north—west england and northern ireland. patchy rain here, which could become heavier from the west into the afternoon. further south, some spells of hazy sunshine. it will be a breezy day, quite a windy one, actually, across northern scotland. but as far as the temperatures go, well, 18 degrees in aberdeen, 17 in belfast, but a high of 2a across some parts of south—east england. now, as we go through monday night into the early part of tuesday, we'll see more splashes of rain at times across northern ireland, northern england and scotland. some clear spells further south, but look at those overnight temperatures — ii, 12 degrees the minimum values for some. so a very mild start to tuesday morning. again we see a lot of cloud across northern areas, with some patchy rain at times.

it's likely to be quite misty and murky for some of these western coasts, as well. further south and further east, that's where we see the best of the sunshine and, once again, the highest of the temperatures. 25 degrees looks likely in london by this stage. now, as we move into wednesday, high pressure firmly in charge for the middle of the week, these frontal systems being held at bay for the time being. so i think wednesday is going to be the sunniest day of the week, even northern ireland and scotland brightening up by this stage. the exception — shetland here. you'll hold onto a lot of cloud, some splashes of rain, temperatures topping out at around 9 degrees. further south, though, a high of 27 degrees is possible. now, things do change for the end of the week. we could see some thunderstorms breaking out on thursday. it turns windy for all of us on friday, with some rain at times, and by this stage it'll feel a bit cooler.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. i'm sally bundock. protests in brazil's largest city opposing the state's lockdown, but the mayor warns the health system is about to collapse. japan's economy slides into recession for the first quarter and fears the us is heading the same way. in england, a row between government and unions over whether schools can reopen in two weeks‘ time. and ten weeks after imposing the world's first national lockdown, italy reopens shops and restaurants from today.