Tag Archives: health

© Colicaranica _ Dreamstime.com Over two days last week, Thailand reported a score of new coronavirus cases. All were Thai nationals returning by air from the Middle East. Otherwise, there have been almost no new community or ‘inside country’ cases since mid-May. Thai Airways (as with a growing number of other airlines) requires a “fit-to-fly” medical certificate for all passengers; it also obliges passengers to wear face masks throughout the entire flight. Such...

© Alexirina27000 | Dreamstime.com Switzerland’s Federal Council announced on June 2 that it plans to maintain border restrictions with Italy until further notice as a reciprocal border arrangement with Italy would be premature. From 3 June 2020, Swiss residents will be able to travel to and return from Italy, but Italians or Italian residents will not be able to travel to and from Switzerland unless they are able to under current border restrictions, for example...

© Martinmark | Dreamstime.com Based on data from the first wave of Covid-19, epidemic modellers in Zurich estimate Switzerland would have suffered 22,000 deaths without the restrictions on daily life introduced in March 2020. The modelling, done by Fadoua Balabdaoui and Dirk Mohr at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), estimates nearly 75% of Switzerland’s population would be infected by now. One of the difficulties decision makers face when...

© Mengtianhan | Dreamstime.com 2.1% of the 100,000 hospital staff working across 20 Swiss hospitals were infected with SARS-COV-2, according to a report published in the SonntagsZeitung. The worst affected hospitals were in Geneva (6.26%), Neuchâtel (3.18%), Valais (2.86%), Lausanne (2.75%), Fribourg (2.74%) and Jura (2.11%). Rates of infection in hospitals in German-speaking Switzerland were lower. Thurgau’s hospital recorded the lowest rate (0.36%). Higher...

© Marcos del Mazo | Dreamstime.com The number of daily new cases has remained low in Switzerland throughout May. The highest number of new cases over this period was recorded on 1 May (119). The latest daily number, published on 29 May, was 31 new daily cases. Since the beginning of May the number has been as low as 10. The total number of reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction, or RT-PCR tests undertaken by 29 May 2020 was 390,688. At the beginning these...

© Octavian Lazar | Dreamstime.com Over the last week there have been an average of 15 new SARS-CoV-2 cases a day. The first confirmed case in Switzerland was recorded on 24 February 2020. In the week that followed the number of new daily infections rose to 31. Another week later the number of new daily cases was 192. The daily new case number then took another 14 days to rise to a peak of 1,464 cases on 23 March 2020 before declining. By 1 May 2020, 39 days later it...

The decentralised SwissCovid app is the first in the world to use the OS updates from Apple and Google.  (Keystone / Laurent Gillieron) Authorities have released the source code of the SwissCovid app to the public to allow experts and hackers to detect any risks to privacy before the official launch. The source code of the decentralised contact tracing app DP-3T, developed by the two Swiss federal institutes of technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) and Lausanne (EPFL)...

[caption id="attachment_459835" align="alignleft" width="400"] © Vladimir Fedorov | Dreamstime.com[/caption] Working from home is a mixed bag of pros and cons for most Swiss who were surveyed by gfs.bern in March and April 2020. But it worked for most. In 2019, before the outbreak of the corona pandemic, around 1.1 million employees in Switzerland occasionally worked from home. During the pandemic the number of hours worked at home...

Working from home is a mixed bag of pros and cons for most Swiss who were surveyed by gfs.bern in March and April 2020. But it worked for most. © Vladimir Fedorov | Dreamstime.comIn 2019, before the outbreak of the corona pandemic, around 1.1 million employees in Switzerland occasionally worked from home. During the pandemic the number of hours worked at home more than tripled. Before the virus an average employee spent 10.5 hours working from home a week. During the lockdown, the...

40% of restaurants that have reopened in Switzerland fear they won’t survive, according to a recent industry survey by Gastro Suisse. © Rtdeleon04 | Dreamstime.comWhen Switzerland’s federal government allowed restaurants to reopen on 11 May 2020 around three quarters did. Many of those that didn’t, decided they wouldn’t be able to turn a profit operating with the required space and hygiene requirements. Those that did open report revenues on average 60% lower than over the same period...