Switzerland Today
Greetings from Bern,
Here are the latest news, stories, and debates doing the rounds in Switzerland on Tuesday.
In the news – vaccines for children, hydro power for the Alps, and a windfall for Vifor pharma shareholders.
- After last Friday’s approval by the medical regulator, Swiss authorities today extended the Covid vaccination programme to children aged five to 11. So far, the two-shot course for this age group only applies for the Pfizer/BioNtech vaccine; Moderna’s Spikevax is still in the approval process. Authorities said children with pre-existing illnesses are particularly concerned, as well as those in close contact with vulnerable adults.
- A public-private roundtable has outlined 15 major new hydroelectric projects in the Swiss Alps to help the country’s energy transition in the coming decades. Mostly in cantons Valais, Bern, and Graubünden, the projects involve the type of big dams already peppered throughout the Swiss Alps; the hope is they will help to prevent future energy shortages and move the country to a greener grid. Local opposition to the projects is expected.
- Australian biotech company CSL has agreed to buy Swiss drugmaker Vifor Pharma AG for a whopping $11.7 billion (CHF10.78 billion). With the purchase, CSL will move into the area of kidney disease and iron deficiency treatment – the specialisation of Vifor (formerly known as Galenica). The takeover will push the value of global mergers and acquisitions in the healthcare and pharma sectors past its all-time record, Bloomberg reports.
Another loophole plugged? Swiss health office devises transitional test solution for ‘recovered’ inbound travellers.
While nurses, restaurateurs, and mentally fragile folk have (deservedly) been on the end of much public sympathy during the pandemic, it’s difficult not to feel a bit sorry for the poor officials at the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH), who have received nothing but slack for their efforts to put some framework around the chaos. The latest crack in the façade is that current inbound travel rules for Switzerland – all adults must present a negative PCR test – could unfairly discriminate against those recovered from the virus. Why? According to the SonntagsZeitungExternal link, after recovery, you can still test positive for over a month! This means travellers risk being stranded in Bali or Barcelona, endlessly taking PCR tests until one shows negative. “Travel has become a lottery,” another newspaper said at the weekend.
Today, however, the FOPH reacted. Blick reportsExternal link that a “transitional solution” will allow recovered people to board their flight to Switzerland if: 1 They can show medical proof of recovery from Covid in the past 30 days; 2 they have no symptoms; and 3 they can show a negative antigen, rather than PCR, test result. Good news! Hopefully it will satisfy a few people, and give the FOPH some breathing space until the next problem comes along, when they can “again reap some criticism”, as 20 Minuten wrote this morning, referring to another alleged failure. [Note: this journalist, having logged on to the FOPH’s website several times in the past 24 hours to check the updated rules, may have stumbled on the next problem – the site’s all-important “CoronavirusExternal link” page has been consistently showing a “504 error”; hopefully they haven’t thrown in the towel completely…]
How many cars are stolen each day in Switzerland? Lots, but not as much as in some other places.
Switzerland is “a privileged location” for car thieves, writes the Keystone-SDA news agency today, referring to an international ranking drawn up by confused.com, a UK insurance comparison site. Some 19 vehicles each day are snatched by robbers in Switzerland; each year, a total of 85 per 100,000 inhabitants go astray. This does sound like a lot: although to call the Alpine nation “popular” among carjackers seems to suggest the Keystone-SDA agency was itself a bit confused by the ranking, since in the list of 15 European nations, Switzerland is actually… joint 14th, i.e. last. Much more popular are frontrunner Italy (276 per 100,000 inhabitants), Czechia (274 per 100,000) and Sweden (266 per 100,000).
School’s out: good news for children, but what about the adults? Can we finish early too?
Here in canton Bern, primary school children did not only learn on Tuesday that they were next in line to receive Covid jabs. They also learned they are to be let loose a full week earlier than planned for Christmas holidays. As of Friday, school is out! Bern authorities already said last week they were going to end term a few days earlier than usual, on December 22, as a way of stemming the tide of Covid infections among children. The latest decision, while an early Christmas present for kids, is rather a Christmas headache for parents; more on this in tomorrow’s briefing, when my colleague, who has a more personal interest in this issue (hint: she is not a child), will be on the desk.
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