Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the actions taken by the government of Sweden in regard to social distancing on slowing the spread of COVID-19.

Direct comparisons between countries are difficult. Outbreak responses includes packages of control measures and the components of packages differ between countries, as do the times at which they are introduced. Real-time comparisons of impacts of COVID-19 on different countries are likely to be less accurate and less useful than the comparisons that we can expect to occur at the end of the pandemic, when complete data are likely to be available.