Norway Prime Minister Erna Solberg told children on Thursday that she had high hopes about a vaccine being found to combat the novel coronavirus. During her third news conference held specially for children, she said that the disease could become one among the several diseases kids will be vaccinated against. The news conference is the third such briefing since the COVID-19 outbreak began where only children are allowed to field questions, with adults told to remain quiet. 

At the first briefing on March 16, Solberg told children that it was "OK" to be scared about the pandemic. "I think we'll be able to find a vaccine and that means that corona will continue to exist but because we will be vaccinated we will not become ill or not so ill from it," she said, while adding that she was sick with measles when she was little. "That is a disease that almost all children in Norway are vaccinated against now, but that was a very dangerous disease when I was little ... Now it (the coronavirus) will be like with the measles or rubella.", she stated. 

Among the other queries asked by children and sent in advance via children's TV programme Supernytt were: "Do we have enough soap?", "Does Norway have any money left after the pandemic?" and "Could we have Antibac that smells nice?". Responding to the questions, Solberg said, "It would be nice, wouldn't it, if it smelled like flowers." She also added, "But the most important is that it works ... And sometimes you find Antibac that smell better than others."

At the same news conference, Kjell Ingolf Ropstad, the Minister for Children and Family, told that Norway's soap supplies are in plenty and were enough to cope with the coronavirus pandemic crisis. Schools across the country were reopened on April 27 and classes resumed as normal after the summer holidays came to end on August 17. Students are not required to wear masks, but have been told to maintain social distancing during breaks. So far, Norway has reported a total of 10,871 COVID-19 infections and 264 deaths.