Covid-19 in Iceland

Iceland has in recent weeks seen an unprecedented surge in the number of detected cases of Covid-19 since the global pandemic started in early 2020. For a forthcoming publication on the Geographies of Covid we have worked with colleagues on a book chapter about the pandemic in Iceland where we explored the role of Iceland’s island status in these dynamics. We accompanied this with a timeline of the main responses from the public authorities and put this into the context of the detected cases within the country and at the border. Since we submitted our contribution last summer, quite a lot has changed. Our original analysis ended in May 2021, covering the first three major waves. While the book is in the production, this story needs to be continued, so that the following chart is an update to the graphic that will be included in the book. In this new graphic in can be seen how Iceland embarked into a summer that saw case numbers that haven’t been seen any time before in the course of the pandemic, and along with it an increasingly divided debate within society which – as outline in our chapter – had previously been rather consensual and relatively harmonic compared to other countries. Here is the updated version of the chart (as of 11 November 2021), a story that has not yet come to an end:

COVID-19 cases (domestic and at the border) in Iceland and key dates in the response from public authorities