How Covid-19 Affects Scandinavian Countries

Health Special

The coronavirus pandemic has affected the entire world, and that’s a fact. Starting with the overall wellbeing of the entire population, to every branch of the industry, the pandemic has heavily impacted every one of us. Learn more about how COVID-19 affects Scandinavian countries.

How COVID-19 Affects Scandinavian Countries

Text John Peterson

The coronavirus pandemic has affected the entire world, and that’s a fact. Starting with the overall wellbeing of the entire population, to every branch of the industry, the pandemic has heavily impacted every one of us. Learn more about how COVID-19 affects Scandinavian countries.

Even though we had no other choice than to adapt to this new lifestyle, the impact this pandemic has left is huge, and you can see that everywhere you turn your head around: it’s reflected in tourism, it has impacted small businesses, our general physical and mental health, etc.

Scandinavian countries have been affected in the same way most European countries have.

Related: Winter COVID-19 Blues in Norway Tourism Generally, tourists tend to visit Nordic countries in the summer – starting from June, until late August or even September. As Scandinavian countries are not the warmest countries, people plan their visits around that time.

Even though these countries have similar policies and ethics, the way they’ve handled the virus was a bit different, especially in the beginning of the pandemic. For instance, from the very beginning, Norway has shut down the doors of the educational institutions, sports and cultural activities have been interrupted, and so on.

Sweden, on the other hand, has kept most of these facilities open, in hope of keeping people’s morals high. When the international governments adopted the full lockdowns, borders have also closed. That’s when the tourism has started to struggle to survive. The number of foreign visitors has dramatically decreased, and this resulted in many hotels, restaurants and cafes to lose their businesses.

The impact this pandemic has left is huge, and you can see that everywhere you turn your head around. Photo: Nordforsk

Even though you may have been able to visit Norway, there were a lot of rules that had to be respected.. Photo: Fusion Medical Animation/Unsplash

Even though you were able to visit the country, there were a lot of rules that had to be respected.

Population Of course, as the rest of the countries of the world, people have been confused. Even though it has been expected that most Nordic countries will adapt the same COVID-19 policies, it was surprising to see that Sweden decided to take some different decisions than the rest of the countries.

While everyone else was in a total lockdown, Sweden has kept the doors open for many services. However, it is not to say that that was the best approach, neither the worst. While it might have helped people, psychologically, to know that they can still carry on with their usual daily lives, there were still plenty of restrictions that were only to show that the situation was quickly aggravating, and the high mortality note can confirm it.

Related: How Traveling to Europe and Scandinavia Will Change in 2022

Businesses Some of the businesses have had a lot to suffer, while others, on the other hand, have thrived during the pandemic.

The main ones have been, no doubt, the businesses in the tourist industry. Owners of hotels and restaurants have gone through probably the worst period of their entire careers. A big part of them have had to shut down entirely, especially smaller, familyowned businesses.

Many workers have had to start working from home, and had to learn how to cope with that. The entire daily routines for most of us has entirely changed.

A large number of businesses have asked their employees to work from home, which has had both positive and negative effects for the overall business. On one hand, working from home has diminished a lot of costs, which was great for employers. On the other hand, in some cases, there has been noticed a big leap in productivity,

especially in the beginning of all this, when people had to learn how to manage their time and tasks from home, and still be productive.

The businesses for which the pandemic has brought more workload have been the online businesses, mainly. The top industry will probably remain Information Technology, and after that comes other businesses that can be done entirely online. For example, the pandemic was a great time for an independent entrepreneur to launch

Many workers have had to start working from home, and had to learn how to cope with that. Photo: Branimir Balogovic/Unsplash

his first online course. Being a writer for an assignment writing service was also a great remote job, as students have not interrupted their studies.

Education Even though Sweden, for example, has adopted a different approach for education, meaning that they have implemented a hybrid where students have gone through a mix of going to school and homeschooling, education has been highly impacted by the pandemic.

It is true that schools remained open even during the lockdowns, but it has also been proven that online school has not been as effective. While many teachers were familiar with distance/ remote learning and teaching, some of them were not, and have had a hard time pulling themselves together. Besides the regular teaching skills, school employers had to ensure that teachers also possess the necessary technological skills to be able to conduct their classes using a tablet/ computer and specific pieces of software, which has not been easy in some situations.

How COVID-19 Affects Scandinavian Countries is written exclusively for Daily Scandinavian by John Peterson. John is a journalist with 4 years’ experience working in London magazine “Shop&buy”. He is a professional mini-tennis player and he has written a novel “His heart”. He is also one of the essay writers at a well-known essay writing service. You can find him at fb.