Superspreader discovered, illegal rave in Bern – what you need to know about the party weekend
Switzerland has had a wild party weekend. A superspreader event was confirmed in Zurich, and fear of it is growing in Bern. What you need to know
What happened?
On Saturday, it was announced that a party goer had infected at least five people with the corona virus in Zurich the weekend before. While there were words of praise from the canton’s address on Saturday evening to the address of the club operator, it sounded very different on Sunday.
Because: Contact tracing obviously didn’t work at all. Of the almost 300 guests on the list, around a third gave an obviously incorrect email address, some with vulgar content. In addition, not all of the guests had entered the list. Several people reported to the canton that they had also celebrated in the Flamingo Club – but were not notified.
The time factor was also unsatisfactory: it took almost a week for all known party guests to be notified. But just: only the known ones. In addition, the tracers of the canton were sometimes insulted when contacting them.
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Another event worried the Bernese: Several hundred mostly young people celebrated a wild, very loud techno party on the rifle mat in front of the riding school. That is why the cantonal police in Bern received more than a hundred noise complaints overnight.
Because too many people were present, the police did not want to intervene for the time being. The police only seized the music system in the early morning and took two people to a police station for clarification. They should be displayed.
What are the reactions?
The federal experts expressed concern at the weekend about the epidemiological situation in Switzerland. Task Force Leader Matthias Egger is concerned about the development of the numbers. The number of reproductions is 1.28, he tweeted on Saturday. A reproduction number above 1 is an alarm sign – the virus will spread further, Egger told Radio SRF.
He is concerned about what the latest opening steps would bring, because the current number of reproductions is due to earlier opening steps.
Epidemiologist Christian Althaus from the University of Bern only tweeted on Sunday: «Déja vu …»
And his colleague Marcel Salathé also quoted Einstein on Twitter:
National politicians remained relatively quiet on Twitter. CVP President Gerhard Pfister only shared a tweet with the content: “Party and demos = Lockdown Part 2 is coming.”
What’s next now?
Minister of Health Alain Berset is meeting the cantons today on Monday. The meeting had been planned for some time, now it is likely to be a crisis meeting. Participants are according to Daily gauges Representatives of the cantonal health directors, the conference of the cantonal governments and cantonal doctors.
Because there has been a change from the extraordinary to the special situation since June 19, the cantons are primarily responsible for containing the epidemic. However, the federal government can issue general rules of conduct such as keeping a distance.
But the mask requirement should also be addressed. For example, the president of the cantonal conference of health directors (GDK), Lukas Engelberger, would like a national mask requirement for public transport. A cantonal solution would cause problems because the trains run all over the country.
After the recent events, however, contact tracing should also become the topic of the meeting. The Zurich case has shown that this does not yet work as desired.
On Sunday, Zurich health director Natalie Rickli announced that she would meet with the bar and club commission to discuss the events of the past week. And: If there is no improvement next weekend, the clubs would be closed again. (Yes W)
