About SWECOV

The official name of SWECOV is Ett forskningsprogram om covid-19 i Sverige: Smittspridning, bekämpning och effekter på individer och samhälle. The broad purpose of the project is to answer two research questions:

What are the consequences of COVID-19—as well as the interventions and reforms implemented to stop the spread of the disease—on public health, in terms of mortality and morbidity, but also psychological and physiological well-being more broadly?
What are the consequences of the pandemic—as well as the interventions and reforms implemented to stop the spread of the disease—for central social and economic outcomes, like jobs, income and inequality?

The research project was started by Professor Torsten Persson in collaboration with the Swedish Corona Commission. Professor Persson, who was also a member of the commission, realized that it would be crucial for the commission to support new research in order to properly fulfill its task.

During its working period, which ended with the publication of a final report in February 2022, the Corona Commission supported the research in SWECOV, chiefly by financing data purchases from different registers. In early 2022, the board of Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (The Riksbank Tercentenary Foundation) took a decision to support the continuation of SWECOV—as a major data source and network for research about the pandemic and its consequences—with a generous four-year grant.

Project coordinators

Torsten Persson

Principal investigator

Swedish Research Council Distinguished Professor at the Institute for International Economic Studies at Stockholm university

[email protected]

http://perseus.iies.su.se/~tpers/

Adam Altmejd

Project coordinator

Postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Social Research at Stockholm university and at the Department of Finance at Stockholm School of Economics.

[email protected]

https://adamaltmejd.se

Dominik Dietler

Project coordinator

Researcher at the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at Lund University.

[email protected]

https://portal.research.lu.se/en/persons/dominik-dietler

Olof Östergren

Project coordinator

Researcher at the Department of Public Health Sciences at Stockholm university

[email protected]

https://www.su.se/english/profiles/olos9870-1.187865

Steering board

The SWECOV steering board sets the direction and agenda for the project. The board meets four times per year. In addition to the project coordinators above, the board currently consists of:

Jonas Björk, Lund University
Anna-Mia Ekström, Karolinska Institutet
Tove Fall, Uppsala University
Olle Lundberg, Stockholm University and FORTE
Oskar Nordström Skans, Uppsala University

SWECOV Workshop

SWECOV hosts a yearly research workshop. Previous programs can be found here.

2023