Switzerland Today

Hello from Bern,

From the country’s universities to its restaurants, the fallout from yesterday’s announcement about a Covid certificate mandate in indoor public spaces is being keenly felt and debated.

All the more reason for the Interior minister responsible for health, Alain Berset, to go on a charm offensive and convince the naysayers this is as close to “normal” as life will get during the fourth wave.

Keystone / Marcel Bieri

In the news: Since announcing the expansion of the use of the Covid certificate, Berset has been busy defending his government’s decision.

• “The alternative to the certificate would be months of closures,” Berset told Swiss public television SRF. “So the certificate is not the problem – it is the solution.” His words came as over 1,000 demonstrators, some waving large Swiss flags, gathered in Bern to complain that the new measure was the government’s way of imposing mandatory vaccination “through the back door”.
• A group of parliamentarians headed to Brussels on Wednesday in the latest attempt to patch up relations with the European Union, damaged in the aftermath of a Swiss decision last June to end negotiations on new framework conditions for future bilateral ties. But the new EU commissioner in charge of EU-Swiss dialogue, Maros Sefcovic, was not taken in by their overtures, tweeting “Our relationship deserves better than a lack of prospects.”
• Today the venerable Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EFPL) became the first higher learning institution to impose the Covid certificate for entry into lecture halls when students return in the autumn. The University of Lausanne quickly followed suit, this after the Federal Council said yesterday that it was up to cantons and institutions to decide on certificate mandates.

Keystone / Francesca Agosta

Questions are being raised about how schools are handling in-person learning amidst the fourth wave of the pandemic.

Covid outbreaks among school-aged kids are multiplying, with a primary school in Lenzburg, canton Aargau, having become a poster child for the crisis after all 600 of its pupils had to go into quarantine. The incidence of positive tests in Switzerland is especially high among kids under 10External link.

Cantons, which are responsible for education matters, have chosen different approaches to fight the coronavirus this school year. Basel-Stadt is banking on regular testing in classes and, as Swiss public radio SRF reportsExternal link, schools there have a comparatively low infection rate.

“Testing is an essential part of the whole strategy,” said Basel-Stadt cantonal doctor, Thomas Steffen. “Other aspects, such as mandatory masks or filter systems, are not off the table either.”

But not everyone believes that more health and safety measures are needed to cull infection rates. Enter Christoph Berger, head of the Federal Vaccination Commission, who’s making waves today for suggesting that neither quarantines nor masks are necessary in schools. Granted, he does say regular mass testing is the way to go, a measure that some schools and cantons have done away with.

As we report in today’s news column, the debate about Covid strategies in the education system appears far from over, with attention now also turning to universities and whether they will all mandate the Covid certificate.

Keystone / Greg Semendinger

Twenty years ago today, the last commander to resist the Taliban in Afghanistan, Ahmad Shah Massoud, was killed in a suicide attack by Al-Qaida.

That’s the same terrorist group that two days later claimed responsibility for the attacks on New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. Across Swiss media, politicians, historians and counter-terrorism experts are sharing their reflections ahead of the 20^th anniversary of 9/11.

American-Scottish historian Niall Ferguson does not see the attacks as a turning point in history: Terrorism was already a reality then, even if the US had not before experienced it on such a scale, he says in an interviewExternal link with the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. More than the attacks, it was the election of George W. Bush that shaped history, he argues, as he is the one who decided to invade Iraq – something a different president would not necessarily have done as part of any “war on terror”.

Back in Switzerland, the threat of a terror attack is still high, according to André Duvillard, delegate of the National Security Network, speaking to Fribourg paper La LibertéExternal link on Thursday. Attacks on the scale of those of 9/11 or in Paris in November 2015 are unlikely, but isolated events, “like the one in Morges in 2020, can still happen and their impact can be just as significant as large-scale attacks,” he said.