Denmark, Finland and Norway are debating whether to maintain travel restrictions on Sweden but ease them for other countries as they nervously eye their Nordic neighbour’s higher coronavirus death toll.

Sweden has the highest mortality rate per capita at this stage of the epidemic, according to a Financial Times tracker that uses a seven-day rolling average of new deaths. It has overtaken the UK, Italy and Belgium in recent days.

Frode Forland, specialist director in infectious diseases at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, told the Financial Times keeping borders closed had “a certain infectious-disease logic” while a big difference in infection rates remained between countries. “The situation is quite different now between Norway and Sweden,” he said.