Tag Archives: 3) Swiss Markets and News

During 2020, average annual inflation was –0.7%, according to Switzerland’s Federal Statistical Office (FSO). © Dmitri Maruta | Dreamstime.com - Click to enlarge In December 2020, Switzerland’s consumer price index (CPI) fell by 0.1% compared with November 2020. Compared to December 2019, prices in December 2020 were 0.8% lower. Annual inflation reached -0.7% across the full year. The main drivers of a falling CPI were lower travel prices and fuel costs. The price...

Switzerland’s Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) recently reported that 66,000 people in Switzerland had been vaccinated against the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19. © Oxana Medvedeva | Dreamstime.com - Click to enlarge The number was communicated by Nora Kronig of the FOPH during a press conference in Bern on Thursday 14 January 2020. The 66,000 is likely to be lower than the actual number because of delays in the flow of information from cantonal health...

Tension between Switzerland’s scientists and politicians is rising, according to RTS. Bern_© Petr Pohudka _ Dreamstime.com - Click to enlarge On Saturday, Christian Althaus, an epidemiologist working for the Swiss National COVID-19 Science Task Force, Switzerland’s scientific Covid advisory team, announced his resignation and voiced his frustration on Twitter. “One of the reasons why I left the scientific task force this week. Politicians must finally learn to face...

Recent research based on information from 3,762 Long Covid sufferers shows most still have symptoms after 7 months. © Tero Vesalainen | Dreamstime.com - Click to enlarge The study uses patient-driven research and is based on a survey created by a team of patients with COVID-19 who are members of the Body Politic online COVID-19 support group. The group conducted its first survey in April 2020 and issued a subsequent report in May 2020. Participants were not randomly...

Probably not on the chopping list: UBS headquarters in Zurich. © Keystone / Gaetan Bally The closures will affect 44 of the bank’s 239 branches in the country, mainly smaller ones, UBS confirmed on Tuesday. The bank plans to continue beefing up its online offers. The announcement, which had been rumoured for a few months already, was confirmedExternal link by UBS Switzerland director Axel Lehmann to the Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper on Tuesday. Lehmann said the...

© Pattanaphong Khuankaew | Dreamstime.com On 12 January 2021, Swissmedic, the Swiss agency for the authorisation and supervision of pharmaceutical products, approved a second vaccination against the SARS-CoV-2 virus for the Swiss market. The vaccine from Moderna, of which the federal government has ordered around 7.5 million doses, has been approved for adults from age 18. Over the coming days a delivery of 200,000 doses will be made to Switzerland’s military, which...

Swiss restaurants are experiencing a second, and in some cases third shutdown in a year owing to the pandemic. Keystone / Urs Flueeler Half of all hotel and restaurant businesses in Switzerland will go bankrupt by the end of March if they do not receive immediate financial compensation for the effects of coronavirus restrictions, warns the sector’s umbrella organisation. Based on a survey of more than 4,000 of its members, GastroSuisse says 98% of its members need...

The number of Covid cases went down significantly in Switzerland during spring as a result of schools closing, according to a study by ETH Zurich, reported RTS. School closed ©Andrey Zhuravlev -Dreamstime.com - Click to enlarge Researchers at the university analysed anonymised mobile phone data of 1.5 billion movements of the Swiss population between 10 February and 26 April 2020. They used this data to calculate how much certain measures reduced mobility and...

The aim of such attacks is usually to force organisations to cease operations or to extort ransom money Keystone / Sascha Steinbach Several security bodies in Switzerland have been targeted by emails that appear to come from official organisations such as banks or the police and contain a password for a zip file. When this file is opened, the computer becomes infected with a trojan called Emotet. The Bern cantonal police force is one institution that has been...

© Sylvain Robin | Dreamstime.com Despite the economic impacts of the coronavirus, significantly fewer Swiss companies went bankrupt in 2020 than the year before, according to the business data company Bisnode. During 2020, 3,811 Swiss companies filed for bankruptcy, 19% fewer than in 2019. Sectors that experienced the greatest fall in bankruptcies include artisans (-174 bankruptcies), hotels and restaurants (-124), retailers (-68) and wholesalers (-66). The slowdown...