▲The area around Helsinki Cathedral, where tourists always flock, is deserted due to COVID-19.
Bomi Kwon
What's symbolic is the blockade of Helsinki, the capital of Finland. Helsinki is the 'happiest city in the world' the UN chose this year. However, when 70% of the confirmed cases came out in the metropolitan area including Helsinki, the government blocked the metropolitan area (Uusimaa Region), which has 1.67 million people, from March 28. People in the metropolitan area tend to have cottages in countryside. The blockade is imposed because if they moved to their cottages in the small towns to avoid COVID-19, it would cause serious problems in the rural areas that lack medical facilities and equipment.
Finnish people are following the government's 'social-distancing' policy quite well. In the past, we used to shop at the supermarket 3 or 4 times a week, but now we do that only once a week, and customers keep their distance of more than 1meter in front of the checkout counter. Helsinki now reminds me of an empty city during the summer vacation season. According to my acquaintance working at IKEA, the furniture sales, such as chairs and desk, have increased because people work from home. Since family members spend a lot of time together in limited places all day, they even joke that they will wait and see whether the divorce rate will increase or the birth rate will increase.
It was a Private Hospital that Requested the COVID-19 Test in Korea
In Finland, if a citizen has respiratory symptoms suspected of being infected with COVID-19, he or she does not go directly to the hospital, but calls the number given by the government and follows the instructions of the medical institution just like Korea does. Finland has a good public healthcare system, so most of the medical expenses, including surgery, are almost free. If you can't afford to pay some of it, the agency in charge of social welfare checks your situation and exempts you in full.
However, promptness is the problem. In public hospitals, knee surgery and back surgery often require more than six months if the patient is not in a very critical condition. If you don't want to wait for such a long time, you can use a private hospital. Of course, private hospitals are very expensive. In the case of gastroscopy, you can get it free in the public hospital, but you have to pay about 1 million won (1,000 USD) in the private hospital. People tend to use private hospitals to use rapid services rather than service quality.
Public and private hospitals also cooperate with each other. If a doctor at a public hospital thinks the patient needs to be treated urgently and determines that the treatment is more effective if it is done at a private hospital, the doctor sends the patient to a private hospital. In this case, the treatment expense is the same as a public hospital. In other words, the state pays for the treatment and provides prompt treatments.
But when it comes to the COVID-19 test, since it's not a treatment but an infection test, you have to pay 195 euros (260,000 KRW) out of your pocket even though you get it from a public hospital because the state doesn't support it. However, since the hospital gives the chance to those with severe symptoms of COVID-19 first, those with mild symptoms can't get the test at their will even if they want to.
So people who want to get the COVID-19 test quickly use private hospitals. Private hospitals charge you 249 euros (about 330,000 KRW) per test. One of the private hospitals is Mehiläinen(Healthcare and Social Service Company), which appeared on the news recently.
Mehiläinen mainly contracts with large companies and provides medical services to their employees. This time, Mehilinen and 10 major companies sent their specimens to Korea for the rapid test of COVID-19.
What do Finnish people think about that? Would they regard it as the collapse of Finland's medical system or the inability of the Finnish government to respond to COVID-19? Or wouldn't they complain about inequality, saying, "Who gets the test early and who gets it late?"
Finnish people calmly say, "We trust the government, and it's not a medical system breakdown."
For the last three days, I've called about 10 Finnish people I know. They are surprisingly calm. They still trust their government firmly. Why is that? There are several reasons for that.
First, Finnish people have long experience and are accustomed to urgently providing medical care only if the patient's condition is very poor. There have been demands for more tests, but complaints about it are not so great.
Second, Mehiläinen, which sent their specimens to Korea by mobilizing Finnair, is a private medical healthcare company, so the citizens step back and watch quietly. Some believe there could be a commercial intention behind increasing the number of tests to be carried out overseas.
Third, the Mehiläinen case has not been interpreted as 'the medical system breakdown' in Finland. Since 'social-distancing' is being practiced properly, it doesn't overload the hospital facilities, and they think it's manageable. In particular, the death toll is 28, which is not large yet.
Fourth, the citizens understand that this COVID-19 incident is a very exceptional situation. So even if there is limited testing due to the lack of test equipment or capacity, they do not blame it for the government's lack of coping skills. They are looking at the situation based on the assumption that it is an extremely exceptional situation no country has predicted since World War II. So, Finnish people don't put the blame on the government for its lack of coping skills or administrative capability.
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