Anders Tegnell
Nils Anders Tegnell (born 17 April 1956)[1] is a Swedish civil servant and physician specialising in infectious disease. From 2013 until his resignation in March 2022 he was Sweden's state epidemiologist.[2][3]
Anders Tegnell
Anders Lindblom
Margit Saskia Neher
- Emily
- Saskia
- Annemiek
Physician,
epidemiologist,
civil servant
Tegnell had key roles in the Swedish response to the 2009 swine flu pandemic and COVID-19 pandemic.[4][5] During the Covid pandemic in 2020, he became a divisive figure in Sweden and internationally due to his and the Public Health Agency of Sweden's opposition to lockdowns, travel restrictions and face masks for general use, which were widely adopted in most countries to curb the spread of the virus, as well as for his leading role in Sweden's controversial approach.
Biography[edit]
Tegnell was born in Uppsala and grew up in Linköping, where he attended Katedralskolan. He studied medicine at Lund University in 1985, subsequently interning at the county hospital in Östersund, and later specialised in infectious disease at Linköping University Hospital.[6] In that capacity, in 1990 he treated the first patient in Sweden with a viral hemorrhagic fever, believed to be a case to be either the Ebola or the Marburg virus disease.[7]
From 1990-93 he worked for the WHO in Laos to create vaccination programs.[8] In an interview with Expressen, he describes his on-site work for the WHO with a Swedish expert team during the 1995 Ebola outbreak in Kikwit, Zaire as a formative experience.[9] From 2002-03 he worked as a national expert for the European Commission to prepare, at the EU level, for public health threats such as anthrax, smallpox and other infectious diseases.[6][2]
Tegnell obtained a research-based senior medical doctorate from Linköping University in 2003 and a MSc in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine in 2004.[10][11] Tegnell then worked at the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control (Smittskyddsinstitutet) 2004–5 and the National Board of Health and Welfare from 2005.[10]
From 2010–12 he served as head of the Department for Knowledge-Based Policy.[10][12] He was department head at the Institute for Communicable Disease Control 2012–13.
He was state epidemiologist of Sweden,[10] a title granted by the Public Health Agency of Sweden, from 2013 until 2022.
2009 swine flu pandemic[edit]
As head of the Infectious Disease Control department at the agency, he had a key role in the Swedish large-scale vaccination program in preparation for the H1N1 swine flu pandemic,[2] which was declared by the WHO in June 2009.[13] Tegnell was embroiled in controversy due to his role in the mass vaccination scheme of 5 million Swedes against swine flu, which caused about 500 children to develop narcolepsy.[14][15][16] Tegnell was reported as saying of Pandemrix, the vaccine that had been known to cause neurological issues in the UK and was not approved by the US FDA, that it would have been highly unethical not to vaccinate people because hundreds of Swedes risked dying.[14][17][18]
Personal life[edit]
Tegnell lives with his Dutch-born wife Margit in Vreta Kloster (outside of Linköping). He has three children.[52][2]
