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Today in Sweden: A round-up of the latest news on Monday

The Local Sweden
The Local Sweden - [email protected]
Today in Sweden: A round-up of the latest news on Monday
A store in Stockholm telling customers a maximum number of 200 people are allowed in at the same time. Photo: Henrik Montgomery/TT

Find out what's going on in Sweden today with The Local's short round-up of the news in less than five minutes.

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Brace yourselves… winter is coming

Sweden's weather agency SMHI issued warnings for heavy snow on Monday.

The alerts cover most regions between Södermanland in the south to Norrbotten in the north and vary in intensity with a class-three alert (the most serious on a scale from one to three) issued for the Västernorrland region and a class-two alert for Jämtland and Västerbotten. Click here to read more.

Around 40-70 centimetres of snow is expected to fall in Västernorrland between Monday evening and the early hours of Wednesday, and coastal areas of Västerbotten are expected to get 25-50 centimetres of snow.

Swedish vocabulary: snow – snö

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Swedish airports record lowest passenger numbers in four decades

Not since the early 1980s have so few people flown to or from one of Sweden's major airports as they did in 2020, a year marked by coronavirus and global travel restrictions.

At Bromma Airport, where most flights are domestic, December travel fell 97 percent compared to the same month in 2019. At Arlanda, Sweden's largest airport, the corresponding drop was 85 percent, and at Landvetter in Gothenburg, 87 percent.

In 2020, more than ten millions travellers flew to or from one of the ten airports operated by Swedavia – a decrease by more than 30 million, or three quarters, on 2019.

You can find more statistics here.

Swedish vocabulary: traveller – resenär


Arlanda Airport in September. Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/TT

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New coronavirus rules in Sweden

Sweden's latest coronavirus restrictions came into force on Sunday. Visitors to shops, gyms and public pools, among other places, will be limited to a maximum of one person per ten square metres, and venues in violation of these rules may be handed fines.

The other new rule is that there is now an eight-person limit on private events organised in commercially hired venues, in order to close a loophole in the public event limit. It doesn't apply to private gatherings – for example meeting people at home – but everyone in Sweden is still expected to socialise only within small circles of close family and friends. The difference is that under the new measure, people who rent a venue for an event of more than eight people can be fined, even if the event was private.

Swedish vocabulary: fines – böter


Gothenburg's Nordstan shopping centre on Sunday. Photo: Adam Ihse/TT

Covid-19 forces Swedish hospitals to delay 'necessary surgery'

Hospitals across Sweden are now postponing urgent operations to make room for coronavirus patients, a survey by Sweden's state broadcaster SR has found.

Every one of the country's 21 regional healthcare authorities reported being in a "strained" or "very strained" situation, with the regions of Jönköping and Uppsala telling SR that they were having to postpone urgent operations on cancer or heart patients. You can read more about this here.

Swedish vocabulary: postpone – skjuta upp

More money for workers in Sweden

Wages have been rising slower than ever due to many negotiations between employers and unions being brought to a halt by the pandemic in 2020. But in real numbers, people have still ended up with more kronor in their coffers thanks to the low rate of inflation.

Swedish public radio SR's news programme Ekot reports that wages are expected to increase around two percent in 2020, but with inflation at around 0.5 percent, that means a real wage increase of 1.5 percent, which is the highest increase since 2015.

Swedish vocabulary: wage increase – löneökning

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