Keystone
About half a dozen schools in Bern will begin preventive corona mass tests in the coming week. They serve as pilot schools in a project with which the Canton of Bern wants to find out how best to carry out mass tests in schools.
The Bernese health director Pierre Alain Schnegg announced the start of this project on Friday afternoon in the “talk of the day” on Swiss radio SRF. The media spokesman for his management, Gundekar Giebel, said on request which schools would participate will not be announced until next week.
But there will be schools of several levels. Saliva tests would be carried out. According to Schnegg, other schools are to participate after the pilot schools. “That will certainly help us to keep the number of cases within the framework,” said the Bernese government council.
Bern companies vaccinate employees
In a radio interview, Schnegg also announced that some larger companies will soon be vaccinating employees as “small vaccination centers”. The canton does not disclose what it is. Giebel pointed out that companies, with the help of a company doctor, can already give flu vaccinations today.
Schnegg is confident that the canton of Bern will manage to administer 200,000 vaccine doses in April and 300,000 twice in May and June. It is the Bernese portion of the delivery of the vaccine manufacturers Pfizer / Biontech and Moderna, the arrival of which the federal government announced on Thursday. It’s about a total of around eight million cans that should arrive between April and July.
Schnegg specified that his prognosis applies in the event that the doses actually arrive. As a precaution, the canton of Bern will continue to store second vaccination doses to ensure that people who have already been vaccinated receive a second vaccination.
Schnegg fehlt «big picture»
The cantonal health director also said that the canton of Bern is ready to share its know-how and software for recording and managing vaccinations with other interested parties. However, this vaccination software cannot serve as the basis for a vaccination certificate as it stands. It is not designed for that.
Schnegg also repeated a criticism that he recently expressed in a conversation with the “Neue Zürcher Zeitung”: He lacks national strategies, a “big picture”, so Schnegg on Friday, that is, a “big picture” .
For him, too often is talked about the “when” and too little about the “how”. When asked, for example, whether the restaurants could be reopened, from his point of view it should be discussed whether new instruments are needed and, if so, which ones. The when is given by the number of cases.
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