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Red Cross commander Gerry Foitik wants to save winter tourism with extreme means: no more K1 contact persons should be tested for this.
The importance of winter tourism is highlighted in an internal strategy document of the Red Cross, the “Today” it was leaked and the “Kurier” reported it. In it, Gerry Foitik, Federal Rescue Commander of the Red Cross, presents how he wants to remove the fear of tourists to vacation in Austria by manipulating the corona tests.
Regarding the targets he formulated in a strategy paper dated 15 October, Foitik writes: “If the numbers go down for a while but are still too high, we could give the EU partners a ‘green’ assessment on a few days stop testing contact persons “1”: the incidence immediately drops by 500 daily (absolute figures from the previous week) with a simultaneous slight decrease in the positivity rate “.
Fewer tests should give the impression that there are fewer cases of corona in Austria. This should also reduce the travel advisories that currently apply to parts of Austria from Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. The EU has classified Austria as “red” on its Corona traffic light. The idea of manipulating the numbers, which according to Foitik “was not intended for the public”, is intended to counter Austria’s dangerous status.
Three million for a new digital proof
In addition, Foitik also wants to improve the digital evidence of Covid-19 and is demanding three million euros for the development of a system that already exists: the proprietary gurgling test, which was developed by virologist Christoph Steininger. In the strategy document, Foitik writes: “An exponential development cannot be counteracted by a linear increase in resources (at least not for long). Therefore, we need dogmatic instruments, which can scale much better. He presents an example “, whose implementation (digital) takes 3 weeks and costs 3 million”.
“In many neighboring countries it is done as I suggest”
In “Today”– Inquiry Foitik backs up their suggestion, explaining: “In many neighboring countries K1 contact persons are not tested at all, in Austria they are. This results in an artificially high incidence for our country and we are in a worse situation yet tests have been done on K1 people. “
The internal document “should show what we can do to reduce the crown numbers.” The Federal Rescue Commander emphasizes that he is generally not against testing K1 people, but questions whether it makes sense in many cases. “K1 people have to stay in quarantine anyway, even if they are negative. If that makes sense is questionable. And if they test positive and have no symptoms, this result is ultimately useless.” There’s also something good about the fact that he caused outrage with his breakthrough: “I’m not saying I have the best of all ideas at the briefing, but I’m happy when something clever comes out of the speech.”
