– If you are in the water and you do not wake up, then you drown if you can not swim, says 11-year-old Nils Sundberg, who is one of nearly 400 children between 6 and 13 years who go to swimming school in Gammelstads bathhouse in Luleå this summer . As a compensation for missed swimming lessons and swimming during the pandemic, a free swimming school is offered together with the swimming club to increase swimming skills among children. Drowning is the third most common cause of death among children according to the Swedish Lifesaving Society, which is also worried that reduced swimming skills during the pandemic will cause drowning accidents this summer. The month of June last year had the second most drowning accidents in the entire 2000s. – Swimming skills have been affected quite badly after the years of pandemic. In year three, we have noticed that it has decreased and this is partly because the schools have during certain periods not been able to swim or that the children have not been able to go and swim in their free time with their parents, because we have had the baths closed for a long time when it was like toughest restrictions. That’s what Veronica Bergsten, head of the bathing business in Luleå, says. See more about how the effects of the pandemic have affected swimming skills in the clip above
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Poorer swimming skills among children after the pandemic
