Three children in Sweden were locked up by their parents for nearly five months in fear of them contracting coronavirus. The children have now been rescued from the home and taken into care by the government. They will not be sent back to their parents, the administrative court in Sweden ruled out.

Between March and early July, the children, aged 10 to 17, were kept in isolation and the family were prohibited from leaving the apartment, children’s lawyer Mikael Svegfors told a local radio station.

‘It is an absolute clash between how people think in different parts of the world,’ Svegfors told the radio. ‘The children got caught up in this, and in the fear of a pandemic we should all be afraid of in one way or another.’

The children were not allowed to see each other, as they were shut in their separate rooms and the door was apparently nailed shut with planks, The Guardian reported. The parents are foreign to the country.

However, the parents deny locking in the children against their will, saying that they were being home-schooled, and plan to appeal against the compulsory care order.

Initially, Sweden did not impose a strict lockdown and kept schools open for children under 16. Following, the Scandinavian country has one of the world’s highest COVID-19 death tolls relative to population, with 575 deaths per million, the media reported.

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