Tag Archives: Editor’s Choice

© Sudok1 | Dreamstime.com The latest figures on Covid-19 patients in intensive care in Swiss hospitals show a steep rise in numbers. On 18 August 2021, there were a reported 163 Covid-19 patients in intensive care wards across Switzerland. This number is far from the peaks of the first and second waves when ICU Covid-19 patient numbers exceeded 500, however the rise over the last month has been steep. On 18 July, there were fewer than 20 ICU Covid-19 patients. By 18...

The latest UBS Swiss Real Estate Bubble Index published this week shows several regions at risk of overheating property prices. © Annanahabed | Dreamstime.comThe regions highlighted as exposed include Basel, Lausanne, Vevey, parts of the Vaud Alps, Lugano, Nidwalden, Luzern, Zug and the Zurich region, all parts of Switzerland where there is plenty of high paid work. Lausanne, Basel, Zug, Luzern and parts of the Zurich region are described as having fundamental risk, while Vevey and...

© Marcos del Mazo | Dreamstime.com Swissmedic, Switzerland’s drug approval agency, extended approval of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine for use on 12 to 17 year olds this week. On 9 August 2021, Swissmedic said that it had carefully examined an application from Moderna Switzerland and had decided to extend the temporary authorisation for the use of its Spikevax vaccine on 12 to 17 year olds. The application, which included data on 3,732 vaccinated children aged between...

© Andrey Popov | Dreamstime.com Recent analysis of data done in the Swiss canton of Vaud found rate of Covid-19 was 83 times higher among the unvaccinated than those who had received two shots of vaccine, reported RTS. During the last two weeks of July 2021, the rate of infection among the vaccinated population was 2.6 per 100,000 compared to 216 per 100,000 among the unvaccinated population, 83 times greater. Vaccinated people were defined as those who had received...

© Swisshippo | Dreamstime.com During July 2021, around 5% to 10% of long-haul passengers, many in transit, were unable to depart from Zurich airport because their Covid-19 documents did not comply with destination country regulations, reported the newspaper Le Temps. In June 2021, around 700 passengers, most of which were in transit, found themselves stuck at Zurich airport. According to a spokesperson at Swissport, a company providing ground services for the...

At 11:20am on Tuesday 3 August 2021, Swisscom’s network went down for 45 minutes, according to Fing, a network monitoring service. © Rostislav Ageev | Dreamstime.comThe outage stretched across nearly all of Switzerland’s highly populated plateau as well as the most southern part of the canton of Ticino, affecting most of the company’s customers – see image below. According to Fing, the network drop rate reached 71% of connections at its peak, affecting both fixed and mobile...

© Sergei Babenko | Dreamstime.com In 2016, the social security office in Zurich discovered a concealed bank account containing CHF 1 million belonging to a deceased man who had received welfare payments for 13 years, reported RTS. Over the 13 years, the man had received financial hardship payments, known as supplemental benefits, and health insurance subsidies amounting to CHF 140,000. When applying for hardship payments in Switzerland, all wealth must be declared....

In 2016, the social security office in Zurich discovered a concealed bank account containing CHF 1 million belonging to a deceased man who had received welfare payments for 13 years, reported RTS. © Sergei Babenko | Dreamstime.comOver the 13 years, the man had received financial hardship payments, known as supplemental benefits, and health insurance subsidies amounting to CHF 140,000. When applying for hardship payments in Switzerland, all wealth must be declared. In general, an...

Those with a migration background in Switzerland are on average financially worse off than those without, according to data from the Federal Statistical Office. And those with a migration background pay on average 10% more per square metre of living space than the rest of the population. © | Dreamstime.comIn Switzerland, around 20% of those with a migration background have trouble making ends meet, compared to 7% of the rest of the population. On average, people without a migration...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Switzerland’s four largest buildings insurers estimate the costs of recent weather events could reach half a billion francs across Switzerland, reported RTS. According to Grégoire Deiss, who works for the cantonal buildings insurer ECAB in Fribourg, the cost of recent storms and flooding could be around CHF 500 million across all of Switzerland, a figure he based on claims that have been made so far.