Sept. 10 (UPI) — Denmark on Friday lifted all of its remaining COVID-19 restrictions, due mainly to the fact that the country has a high vaccination rate.
Denmark introduced vaccine passports in March and officials said almost three-quarters of residents are fully vaccinated. Ninety-six percent of those over 65 are inoculated. In all, nearly 6 million Danes have received the shot.
On Saturday, Copenhagen will host its first concert attended by 50,000 since the pandemic started.
Health officials said low death rates mass vaccinations are the primary reasons the restrictions are going away.
“The vaccines and the great efforts of all of Denmark’s citizens over such a long period are the foundation for why we are going strong,” health minister Magnus Heunicke said this week, according to Politico.
Gert Tingaard, a politics professor at the University of Aarhus, said Denmark’s sense of “social trust” helped drive down illness rates.
“It is striking that we in Denmark do not see a host of conspiracy theories and widespread panic spreading in the handling of the corona crisis,” Tingaard wrote in an op-ed in Science Nordic.
“If you have low levels of trust regarding other people or the authorities, then more draconian laws are potentially required to contain the coronavirus.”
Denmark is the first European Union nation to drop all restrictions. Sweden is poised to follow suit by the end of September.