MEASURES IN C ASE OF A SUSPEC TED OR CONFIRMED INFEC TION The Public Health Agency of Sweden can decide that a certain area must be cordoned off.6 This may happen if a disease posing a danger to the general public has, or is suspected of having, spread within a defined area without the source of infection or the spread of infection being completely clarified. A decision on closure means a ban on people living in the area leaving it and a ban on anyone outside the area visiting it. 3.2 Testing for Covid-19 The Public Health Agency of Sweden has developed a national strategy for expanding the testing and laboratory analysis of Covid-19.7 One of the primary objectives of the strategy is to ensure that the need for testing for Covid-19 is met in the healthcare, care and sectors. In the strategy, the agency has assessed that testing means that another state agency can take protective measures to minimise the infection of residents in care and other vulnerable groups. A reduced risk of infection means that any increased burden on these agencies lowers. Residential institutions refer to institutions where people live together, for example in prisons and remand prisons, forensic psychiatry or the Swedish Migration Agency’s residences. Chief Parliamentary Ombudsman Elisabeth Rynning and Parliamentary Ombudsman Thomas Norling have stated that the National Board of Forensic Medicine’s examination divisions and the National Board of Institutional Care’s special residential homes for substance abusers and special residential homes for young people are additionally defined as institutional residences. 6 Chapter 3, Section 10 of the Communicable Diseases Act. 7 The Public Health Agency of Sweden, National Strategy for Extended Testing and Laboratory Analysis of Covid-19 (version 4), 10 June 2020, pp. 6, 18 and 19. 3 The Prison and Probation Service During the Parliamentary Ombudsmen’s inspections of remand prisons and prisons, it emerged that the Prison and Probation Service’s healthcare during spring 2020 did not have access to testing equipment so as to test inmates continually for Covid-19 infection. On the other hand, the agency had the so-called capillary test to determine if inmates had antibodies to the virus. Such a test can only be performed after an inmate has shown symptoms for seven days. Parliamentary Ombudsman Katarina Påhlsson emphasised that the safety and security of inmates is dependent on there being a capacity to test for infection and that such tests are also carried out. The National Board of Institutional Care At the beginning of the pandemic, the National Board of Institutional Care produced a special support document that its institutions could use, inter alia, to develop local routines. Initially, the support document stated that there was no possibility to, on the basis of the provisions in the Care of Abusers Act, the Care of Young Persons Act and the Enforcement of Secure Youth Care Act, decide on testing for suspected Covid-19 against the will of residents. The regional infectious diseases doctor would not be contacted in these cases either. In a dialogue meeting with the management of the National Board of Institutional Care, Parliamentary Ombudsman Thomas Norling pointed out that the above-mentioned instruction in the support document could lead to the infectious diseases doctor not being informed about a suspected infection of Covid-19. After the dialogue meeting, the National Board of Institutional Care revised the document with an addition that the region’s infectious diseases doctor should be contacted for – 15 –