Swedish Health Agency proposes mandatory COVID test to enter country
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Sweden's Health Agency said on Friday it had recommended the government require travellers show a negative COVID-19 test result before entering the country, in a bid to keep new variants of the virus from spreading.
"The situation is changing extremely rapidly in the outside world and different virus variants can be found in more countries than those we currently know," it said in the press release.
The test would have to be taken a maximum of 48 hours before entering the country.
The Health agency also proposed that newly-arrived travellers self-quarantine for one week and take an additional test after five days.
Cross-border commuters would need to get tested once a week.
Sweden already has travel restrictions in place for people from Britain, Denmark and Norway, as well as travellers from outside the EU.
It has seen a rapid decline in new cases in recent weeks, registering the lowest daily increase in over three months on Friday. [L8N2K454G]
The country of 10 million inhabitants has registered more than 566,000 cases of the virus in total and more than 11,500 deaths.
Sweden's death rate per capita is several times higher than that of its Nordic neighbours, but lower than several European countries that opted for lockdowns.
(Reporting by Johan Ahlander; Editing by Simon Johnson)
