Dr. Good: “Corona – What Switzerland has to do now”

A critical interim assessment one year after the outbreak of the crisis.

• Column by Dr. Philipp Gut

Where’s the common sense? Some readers may have asked themselves this many times in view of the Federal Council’s measures in the fight against the coronavirus. For example, when the Federal Council announced in December that the shops would only stay open until 7 p.m., it was clear that this would at most cause a larger crowd. In other words, the opposite of what the government actually intended.

You didn’t need to be a virologist or a highly decorated scientist to recognize this. In the meantime, however, scientific data also show that this measure was nonsensical.

Lockdown doesn’t work

The repeated lockdowns, i.e. the forced closure of large parts of public and economic life, are far more serious. The Federal Council has not yet had the courage to reopen the shops, bars and restaurants, even though the population is fed up. But the numbers speak for themselves here too.

The lead Federal Office of Public Health (BAG) itself announced that only 1.6 percent of the infections occurred in bars or restaurants. And the renowned scientific magazine “European Journal of Clinical Investigation” even stated that there was no significant positive effect of strict lockdown measures in any single European country examined.

In plain language: The intended effect on containing the virus is negligible, but the economic and social collateral damage increases immeasurably.

6 points to overcome the crisis

So what would sensible and appropriate crisis management look like now?

The following points are decisive:

• The risk groups, especially older people, must be consistently protected;
• The vaccination campaigns are to be continued. The cantons are doing mostly good work here. The eye of the needle lies with the federal government, as there are still too few vaccine doses available;
• Shops, bars and restaurants are to be reopened with immediate effect, of course while maintaining the hygiene measures;
• The targeted, regular testing (“screening”) must be ramped up as quickly as possible. There are now intelligent and fast PCR tests that detect infected people before they are contagious. This allows “submarines” to be filtered out and pandemic-free islands to be created in which normal life is possible again.
• Large-scale testing requires innovative and unbureaucratic solutions: The test speed can be accelerated exponentially by means of pooling, i.e. the simultaneous evaluation of a large number of withdrawals.
• At the same time, the Confederation and the cantons must act quickly to open up unconventional paths. Because the laboratory capacities will reach their limits when hundreds of thousands of tests are carried out every day. There are simple alternatives in the laboratories of disease-tested veterinary medicine or the food inspectorate. It cannot and must not be that drowsy authorities block solutions that save human lives and waste tens of billions of francs in no time

Conclusion: If we learn from past mistakes and quickly take the right measures, then we can grab the virus by the throat – and at the same time take a deep breath as individuals and as an economy.

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