Coronavirus DK: Halftime for a divided Parliament

On Monday, Parliament held its last session (DK) before the summer break, and as usual, all the parties took the podium to sum up their concerns. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen began, saying, “With our shared strength, we have won the first half of the battle against corona. . . . We can be grateful. We can be proud. Denmark has done well. But we are not finished.” She urged the unemployed to take advantage of the educational and supplementary training opportunities in the stimulus package. 

Jakob Ellemann-Jensen, chairperson of the Liberal Party, attacked the administration (DK) for its management of the coronavirus crisis. It has usurped some of the powers that should rest with Parliament, he said. “Denmark is in the middle of an economic crisis. We don’t know how deep it will be, but the government has made it worse” with its hesitant and fumbling reopening policies.

The usual bickering

Ellemann-Jensen criticized the latest stimulus package and particularly the DKK 1,000 payment to people who are not working and do not qualify to draw on vacation savings. Pia Olsen Dyhr from the Socialist People’s Party, which supports the administration, called the latter criticism “grotesque” because the Liberal Party had not opposed the package and the one-off payment when they were deliberated.

Aside from that exchange, very little of the closing debate concerned the pandemic. It covered the many topics that have gotten less attention than usual during the crisis: taxes, the climate agreement, immigration policy, the EU and racism. The latter topic, occasioned by the local BLM demonstrations, led to the most heated disagreements, with the right-wing parties denying that racism was a serious problem in Denmark.

The dreaded second wave

Some doctors are warning that, even though the epidemic is under control in Denmark, a second wave is likely (DK). “We shouldn’t believe that the virus is gone and will never return,” says Lars Østergaard, a specialist in infectious diseases at Aarhus University Hospital. Along with two other researchers, Østergaard wrote in an opinion piece that “a second wave seems unavoidable.”

Opinions have been divided about the likelihood of a relapse. In a press conference in May, Kåre Mølbak, the head of SSI, the agency responsible for preparedness against infectious diseases, said that a second wave was very unlikely. The organization itself had actually taken the opposite position in a report before the press conference. 

The three researchers note that the low infection rate in the country leaves a vast majority of the population – 98 percent – still vulnerable to the virus. “With so few people infected, it is in any case likely that there will be a second wave if we don’t prepare ourselves that it could come.”

Elusive network effects

More than 300,000 people have downloaded the Smittestop app (DK), which is intended to track and control the spread of the virus. The app, which is based on technology from Google and Apple, had been delayed because of concerns about privacy. It is unknown what percentage of the population needs to use the app for it to be effective in containing the virus. 

A study from Oxford concluded that 60 percent is necessary. It will be difficult to attain that degree of usage in Denmark because many people appear to think that the epidemic has passed and are returning to their pre-coronavirus behavior. Despite minor recent outbreaks, there are now only 37 people hospitalized and seven ICU patients in the country.