Denmark health chiefs accused of ‘gaslighting the public’ after lifting all restrictions

Experts have accused Denmark's public health body of 'gaslighting the public' about the country's COVID data after all restrictions were lifted, despite a rise in deaths and cases.

Denmark is in the global spotlight after being the first nation to lift all restrictions on 1 February while cases were at a record high.

Local authorities said the decision was due to the high vaccination rates in Denmark and the lower severity of Omicron.

Cases have remained very high since restrictions were lifted, hitting around 40,000 a day when there were essential no cases a few months ago.

Read more: 'The right thing to do': WHO urges Brits to keep wearing masks and social distance

Read more: Outrage at plans to scrap free COVID testing – ‘This will jeopardise lives’

Since restrictions ended, the Danish public health agency has made the very unusual move of responding to tweets in English from experts about Denmark's data.

The health agency, the SSI, responded to Dr Eric Feigl-Ding, an influential US-based epidemiologist who said the Danish were "out of their minds" for ending COVID mitigations.

The SSI responded to Dr Feigl-Ding's tweet saying, "We would like to stress that the numbers, you are sharing with your followers, shows deaths with COVID-19. Not deaths because of COVID-19," before recommending him some further reading.

Dr Feigl-Ding pointed out deaths had been climbing sharply recently and said whoever was running the SSI Twitter account was "doing a big disservice to the citizens of your country and to the world" and accused them of being delusional.

In response to the actions of the SSI's Twitter account, Dr Deepti Gurdasani, from Queen Mary University of London, accused them of gaslighting.

She said: "At this point it's likely even higher. Stop gaslighting the public. Do your job."

Dr Gurdasani said she and others had been shocked by the messaging coming out of the Danish public health body.

She pointed out that COVID-19 deaths in children exceed those from other childhood illnesses both in the UK and the US, and accused the Danish health body of spreading misinformation by denying it.

What does the data say?

Information from Our World in Data shows a sharp rise in deaths from COVID in recent weeks, following the sharp rise in cases.

Despite the rise, deaths are only around 30 per day, compared to the UK which recorded 183 new deaths on Thursday.

Denmark's population is less than 10 times the size of the UK's.

The peak also matches a much higher number of cases than before, with daily cases running around 40,000 a day.

This is compared to the last peak in deaths which ran at around 35 a day when cases were less 5,000 a day.

In the latest health report by the SSI they say the number of COVID-19 deaths has stabilised and excess deaths are reaching a normal level.

However, they do note the number of new hospital admissions has increased by 22%, but the number of people being admitted to intensive care remained the same.