Norway Is COVID Free, Chief Physician Declares

Norway is COVID free, the chief physician of the infectious disease unit at its Institute of Public Health says. This is in spite of a quarter of the adult population only being fully immunized, reports said.

Dr. Preben Aavitsland tweeted a chart showing the lowest rate of hospital admissions for nearly a year.

"Det var den pandemien," Aavitsland wrote on Twitter which means, "the pandemic is over with," MarketWatch said. 

Aavitsland suggested there would be localized outbreaks of COVID only in the future. "We can start to prepare ourselves for corona taking very little space in our everyday lives," he said.

Norway has one of the lowest infection rates in Europe - with figures lower compared with most of the continent.

Norway recorded an average 5.3 cases per 100,000 people Monday on a seven-day rolling average of new infections, data by Financial Times show.

This is lower than neighbor Sweden - which never imposed a lockdown - but is comparable to its other neighbor, Finland, The National reported.

The world's COVID-19 infections rose to 173.41 million Monday while deaths climbed to 3.73 million, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

The U.S. has the most cases with 33.37 million and 597,760 deaths followed by India with 28.91 million cases and 349,186 deaths. Brazil has 473,404 cases and 16.95 million deaths.

Meanwhile, Espen Nakstad, Norway's Directorate of Health deputy director general, said the pandemic wouldn't be completely over until all adults have been given second vaccine doses.