Feb. 9 (UPI) —<\/span> Sweden ended widespread testing for the coronavirus on Wednesday, closing up mobile tent sites and drive-in centers against trends in other European countries.<\/p>\n The Swedish Health Agency head Karin Tegmark Wisell told local media that aggressive testing for COVID-19 could no longer be justified given the numbers.\n<\/p>\n<\/article>\n According to Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, the country’s seven-day case average has dropped by more than half, from 40,922 at the peak of the Omicron variant spread to 16,668 as of Tuesday.<\/p>\n “We have reached a point where the cost and relevance of the testing are no longer justifiable,” Wisell said, according to The Journal. “If we were to have extensive testing adapted to everyone who has COVID-19, that would mean [$54.8 million] a week and [$219.5 million] a month.”\n<\/p>\n Swedish officials said only healthcare and eldercare workers and the most vulnerable will be tested for free if they are symptomatic, while the rest of the population will be asked to stay home if they show symptoms.<\/p>\n Officials said tourists from member European states will be allowed to travel freely to Sweden.<\/p>\n “As part of the continuing work to phase out the infection control measures against COVID-19, the government today decided to lift all restrictions on entry to Sweden from the Nordic countries and other [European Union] and [European Economic Area] countries,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Justice said, according to SchengenVisaInfo.com.\n<\/p>\n “The decision follows an assessment by the Public Health Agency of Sweden that the entry restrictions are no longer a proportionate infection control measure.”<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A health worker collects COVID-19 PCR tests at a testing site of Svagertorp, Malmoe, Sweden, on Tuesday. Swedish health officials said Wednesday it will no longer do mass testing for the public going forward. Photo by Johan Nilsson\/EPA-EFE Feb. 9 (UPI) — Sweden ended widespread testing for the coronavirus on Wednesday, closing up mobile tent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":983438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-983437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=983437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/983437\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=983437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=983437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=983437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Sweden](\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Sweden-ends-widespread-COVID-19-testing-for-residents.jpg\" "\\"Sweden")
\n<\/div>\nA health worker collects COVID-19 PCR tests at a testing site of Svagertorp, Malmoe, Sweden, on Tuesday. Swedish health officials said Wednesday it will no longer do mass testing for the public going forward. Photo by Johan Nilsson\/EPA-EFE<\/p>\n