In an in-depth article, the Politiken newspaper detailed how the government’s emergency law on March 12 had stripped powers from the Danish Health Authority, changing it from an “regulatory authority” to an “advisory” one.
This allowed the government to ignore the authority’s opinion that Covid-19 was not a sufficiently dangerous disease to permit the government to impose compulsory interventions on the public under Denmark’s epidemic law.
As late as March 15, the Danish health Authority, argued there was insufficient ground for banning public events and gatherings of ten people under the law.
“The Danish Health Authority continues to consider that covid-19 cannot be described as a generally dangerous disease, as it does not have either a usually serious course or a high mortality rate,” it wrote.
“The National Board of Health continues to find that there are no grounds for a general exemption for covid-19 in accordance with the provisions of section 10 …”.