Switzerland Today
Greetings from Lausanne!
The number of visitors to Switzerland is picking up again after two years of the pandemic. New statistics show that US visitors are among the big returnees.
But not everyone is happy. Should tourists from far-away countries be encouraged to fly to Switzerland? This is the question Green parliamentarian Christophe Clivaz is asking. He no longer wants federal subsidies for tourism to be used to attract tourists from the United States, China, and other countries outside Europe, especially when flying has such a big carbon footprint.
“It is contradictory to promote sustainable tourism and at the same time to encourage the arrival of distant visitors by plane”, he says. Switzerland Tourism promotes a “Swisstainable strategy”.
It’s a global issue, says Switzerland Tourism. It argues that if visitors from far away don’t visit Switzerland it will probably have no impact on global CO2 emissions but a “very negative economic and social impact for Switzerland”.
In the news: Rolling Stones cancel, Federer sinks, cannabis business and Ukraine Recovery Conference update.
- The Rolling Stones concert in Bern due to be held on June 17, which was cancelled after Mick Jagger tested positive for Covid-19, cannot be rescheduled, the organisers saidExternal link today. The rock band has had to cancel several concerts in Europe on its “Sixty Tour”.
- Roger Federer has been overtaken by Henri Laaksonen as Switzerland’s leading player in the ATP ranking. Federer is now in 96th place in the professional tennis players’ ranking, one spot behind Laaksonen.
- A studyExternal link published by the University of Geneva estimates that the consumption of cannabis in Switzerland generates an annual turnover of CHF1 billion ($1 billion). It is not just the illegal production and trade in cannabis that benefits, but also many legal economic sectors, from public health and social work to the police and justice system, researchers conclude.
- Officials have paid homage to Konrad Steffen, a prominent Swiss glaciologist who died in Greenland in 2020, by naming a glacier in the north of the territory after him.
- The European Free Trade Association (EFTA), consisting of Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein, are launching negotiations with Thailand and Kosovo on a potential free-trade deals.
- Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis said he expects a “long and complex” reconstruction process in Ukraine. A Ukraine Recovery Conference is scheduled to take place in Lugano from July 4-5.
Switzerland swelters under early summer heatwave.
Switzerland’s June temperature record – 36.9 degrees Celsius in Basel in 1947 – was equalledExternal link on Sunday in Beznau, canton Aargau.
Sizzling temperaturesExternal link were recorded across the country at the weekend, with the Rhône Valley, and the Lake Geneva and Basel regions all topping 35°C on Sunday. Swimming pools, and the shores of lakes and rivers werepacked (see main photo of Limmat River in Zurich above) as residents attempted to cool off.
At lest seven people sadly lost their lives in swimming accidents and drownings at the weekend.
The hot weather is expected to continue this week with scattered thunderstorms, but temperatures should gradually cool down.
Many areas of Western Europe, including Spain, France and Italy, have been sweltering under unseasonably hot temperatures over the past few days, compounding climate change fears.
New Covid surge could infect over one million Swiss this summer.
Around 15% of the Swiss population could get infected this summer with new Omicron subvariants, warns the former head of the government’s Covid-19 taskforce, Tanja Stadler.
European countries are experiencing a surge in Covid-19 cases driven by the BA.4 and BA.5 sub-variants of the highly infectious Omicron strain.
After three months of falling infections, new coronavirus infections have started rising again in Switzerland. The Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) reported 16,610 new cases on June 14 for the previous seven-day period. The seven-day daily average for new infections stood at 2,124, up 45% on the previous week.
Stadler believes many cases are going undetected, pointing to recent wastewater analyses. “There are probably over 80,000 new infections a week,” she said.
BA.4 and BA.5 do not appear to carry a higher risk of severe disease than other forms of Omicron. But an increase in case numbers from higher transmission rates risks leading to an increase in hospitalisations and deaths, say experts.
Despite the rising numbers, there are few serious cases in Swiss hospitals, Stadler says.
The risk of intensive care units becoming overloaded by this new wave is “low”, but more hospitalisations and Long Covid cases can be expected, she said.
American tourists are returning to Switzerland.
After two years of Covid restrictions, tourists are coming back to Switzerland. American visitors are some of the biggest returnees, according to Le Temps newspaperExternal link.
Foreign guests returned to Switzerland in large numbers last winter, representing a 197% increase or +3.7 million more overnight stays than the previous winter season, according to statistics. The total number rose to 5.6 million. Foreign visitors came mostly from Germany, Britain, France and the United States (463,000 overnights or 906% compared with the previous winter). This figure is still down by one-third compared with 2019/2020, however.
As Sunday’s SonntagsBlickExternal link paper found, Americans seem to be once again touringEurope, including stop-offs in the Alps and in Swiss cities.
Many American visitors have saved up holiday time and money for longer breaks, and holidays in the US are no longer that much cheaper than a trip to Europe.
According to the State Secretariat for the Economy (SECO), the average American tourist spends CHF280 a day on holiday in Switzerland, second to the average Chinese tourist (CHF380).
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