Danish disease agency hits back over country's Covid deaths data

The Danish infectious disease agency State Serum Institute has tweeted several times in English in recent days in response to criticism of the country’s decision to lift Covid-19 restrictions, including by an American epidemiologist with over 600,000 followers on Twitter.

The State Serum Institute (SSI), the equivalent of the United States’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has consistently tweeted in English since February 10th in more than 20 different Twitter threads about the Denmark’s Covid-19 data, according to Journalisten. That marks a change in policy for the public institution, which normally communicates in Danish.

Notable tweets by SSI include those made in response to Eric Feigl-Ding, a Harvard-educated epidemiologist based in the United States who, in one tweet, accused the Danish government of “losing its frigging mind” and “gaslighting” the country’s population over its decision at the beginning of February to largely end Covid-19 restrictions.

Dear Eric,
Once again we would like to stress that the numbers, you are sharing with your followers, shows deaths with C-19. Not deaths because of C-19. We would recommend that you read our weekly report for more information on the subject:https://t.co/kZetblDHjh

— Statens Serum Inst. (@SSI_dk) February 15, 2022

“Dear Eric, once again we would like to stress that the numbers you are sharing with your followers shows (sic.) deaths with (Covid)-19. Not deaths because of (Covid)-19. We would recommend that you read our weekly report for more information on the subject,” SSI tweeted in response to Feigl-Ding.

In its decision to lift restrictions, which was based on recommendations made by the Danish Epidemic Commission, the government cited high vaccination rates, the low severity of disease caused by the Omicron variant and high immunity in the community as justifying an end to restrictions.

The number of patients in hospital with a positive Covid-19 test has since increased, but the number of ICU patients who have the virus has remained stable and is lower than it was at the beginning of January.

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Other staff from SSI have also tweeted threads in English to address claims made by Feigl-Ding and other commenters relating to the number of Covid-19 deaths registered in Denmark.

The US epidemiologist claimed that Covid-19 deaths in Denmark were “exponentially surging” as a result of restrictions being lifted.

An SSI chart was posted showing a distinction between deaths caused by Covid-19 and deaths “with” Covid-19 and not caused by it, based on death certificate information.

The SSI chart shows the number of deaths caused by Covid-19 to be stable.

Statens Serum Institute also made an analysis of death certificates, showing that the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not increasing, even with the high rate of infection. (P.25) https://t.co/CHFivKLnaB pic.twitter.com/j7NiLkEP7t

— Søren Neermark (@sneermark) February 14, 2022

The disease control agency’s head of media communications, Flemming Platz, told Journalisten that since restrictions had been lifted “there has been extreme international attention (on Denmark) and it is important that the population can access and understand the things we are doing”.

“We can see on Twitter that many don’t understand our situation [the reasoning for lifting restrictions, ed.] and they are reading our numbers incorrectly, and that is of course also because of language difficulties. So they can’t read the explanations we have,” he said.

“It’s a unique situation. We have unprecedented international attention at the moment. We think it’s our obligation to ensure that the knowledge comes out,” he said.