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The measures currently in place in Switzerland are not close enough, the capacity of the intensive care beds will be reached in two to three weeks, the test capacities will soon reach their limits and the contact tracing will no longer work in most of the cantons.
This was the conclusion reached by representatives of the federal government and the cantons in front of the Bundeshaus media on Friday. “The measures currently in place at the federal level are not enough,” said Martin Ackermann, chairman of the federal Covid-19 scientific working group. The containment strategy no longer works properly and many cases are no longer discovered.
Action must now be taken quickly. We have to act now. If we take action today, it will work in two weeks. The capacity of the intensive care beds will be reached in two to three weeks, ”Ackermann said when asked by a journalist if Switzerland still had time before the Federal Council imposed new measures in Switzerland on Wednesday.
Do the right thing now
The problem doubles every week: doubling the number of cases, doubling the number of hospitalizations and doubling the number of deaths. Containment is in everyone’s interest. “We have no evidence that the virus is less deadly than it was in spring.” The task force recommends taking action quickly and “leaving them in effect until March or April” to contain the epidemic in the long term.
At the same time, Ackermann called not to wait for further action from the authorities, but to limit individual contacts to a minimum: “Let’s not wait for action, let’s do the right thing from now on,” Ackermann said.
Testing capabilities will be exhausted soon
When asked if the Federal Council was reacting quickly enough, Stefan Kuster, Head of Communicable Diseases at the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) said: “We are moving forward.” The BAG is doing an assessment of the situation in cooperation with the working group. “The various actors have definitely taken responsibility: the federal government and the cantons together.”
With the sharp increase in the number of corona cases, Switzerland slowly ran out of testing capacity. “If development continues like this, we will exceed testing capabilities,” Kuster explained. “It’s about reagents, laboratory capabilities, medical capabilities.” The situation is tense. The high positivity rate of more than 20 percent is striking. Every fifth test is positive. According to Kuster, all age groups and cantons are still affected.
Contact tracing has reached its limits
Less and less is known where people are infected, said Rudolf Hauri, a doctor from the canton of Zug and president of the Association of Cantonal Doctors. Tracking cases using contact tracing has reached its limit: “We have a damaged gearbox.” So you can only ask infected people to report their own close and good friends so they can behave carefully and go into quarantine.
Older people and people with prior illnesses would increasingly be behind the sober case numbers. One fifth of positive cases are between 50 and 65 years old, one in ten over 65, a total of around one third over 50 years. That will affect the number of hospitalizations.
Nursing staff required
With the increase in Covid-19 patients in intensive care units, the demands of nursing staff also increased significantly, said Andreas Stettbacher, Federal Delegate for Coordinated Medical Service (KDS). In the event of bottlenecks in hospitals, the cantons could again ask the army for help. “Some cantons are preparing aid.” Even if the virus spreads strongly in nursing homes and nursing homes, the military could help.
With the restrictions and measures, companies are also under pressure again. “Not all companies will survive this crisis,” said Erik Jakob, head of the Directorate of Economic Promotion of the Secretary of State for the Economy (Seco). You have to look this reality in the eye. Difficulty cases would come into play in the Covid Law. Certainly, there are possibilities to allow short-time work more widely, for example also for temporary employees.
