Denmark

In the spring of 2020, the public initiatives in relation to COVID-19 consisted of a rapid closure of many functions in society, which stopped the first wave of the pandemic. This first closure took place on 11 March, when 10 persons were in hospital with COVID-19 and 1 300 in quarantine. As the pandemic had not really taken hold, it caused the first wave to be cut off with a maximum of 535 in hospital on the 1 April 2020. After just over a month, the government took initiatives to involve the civil society in the decision process in the form of so-called sector partnerships. As a result, the opening up and the following closure in the second wave in the autumn of 2020 became more nuanced and took also smaller groups such as groups of people with disabilities into account. Initially, there was a lack of protective equipment and the test capacity was small because the health system, in spite of several warnings from researchers over the past two decades, was not prepared for a pandemic to come. Therefore, the first shutdown had to be done with very rough means. The second shutdown in the autumn 2020 was more gradual and with more regard to people with disabilities.