We study the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) against COVID-19 on the allocation of scarce resources in the hospital sector in Scandinavia. Denmark and Norway imposed strict NPIs, but Sweden followed an extraordinarily lenient approach. We use an event study to compare COVID-19 hospitalizations, intensive-care (ICU) patients, and deaths in Sweden with Denmark and Norway. The outcome variables initially follow a common trend, but diverge 2–3 weeks after lockdown. Both the timing of the effect and the similarity in the trend between Denmark and Norway are highly consistent with a causal effect of the lockdown. We use our event study to build a counterfactual model that predicts the outcome variables for Denmark and Norway if they had followed Sweden’s approach. In the absence of strict NPIs, the peak number of hospitalizations would have been 2.5 (3.5) times as large in Denmark (Norway). Overall, Denmark (Norway) would have had 334 (671) percent more hospital-patient days, 277 (379) percent more ICU-patient days, and 402 (1015) percent more deaths. The benefit of lockdown in terms of healthcare and mortality costs amounts to between 1 and 4 (0.9 and 3.5) percent of GDP in Denmark (Norway).

我们研究了针对 COVID-19 的非药物干预 (NPI) 对斯堪的纳维亚半岛医院部门稀缺资源分配的有效性。丹麦和挪威实施了严格的 NPI，但瑞典采取了非常宽松的做法。我们使用事件研究来比较瑞典与丹麦和挪威的 COVID-19 住院、重症监护 (ICU) 患者和死亡人数。结果变量最初遵循一个共同趋势，但在锁定后 2-3 周出现分歧。丹麦和挪威之间影响的时间和趋势的相似性都与封锁的因果关系高度一致。我们使用我们的事件研究来建立一个反事实模型来预测丹麦和挪威如果遵循瑞典的方法的结果变量。在没有严格的 NPI 的情况下，在丹麦（挪威），最高住院人数将是 2.5 (3.5) 倍。总体而言，丹麦（挪威）的住院天数将增加 334 (671)%，ICU 住院天数将增加 277 (379)%，死亡人数将增加 402 (1015)%。就医疗保健和死亡率成本而言，封锁带来的好处占丹麦（挪威）GDP 的 1% 到 4%（0.9% 到 3.5%）。