What to do with children in quarantine? This is a major problem for many parents and the government seems to have finally listened. Children in quarantine are now allowed to go out for “short” periods so long as they do not meet up with anyone outside of their household. There is also talk of quarantine for children without symptoms to be reduced to 5 days, but this has not been approved yet.
The canton of Geneva, which has an average of 1000 positive cases per day, has decided to instate a shutdown starting tonight at 19.00 and lasting until November 29. Restaurants and bars have to close as do most shops with the exception of essential shops such as grocery stores, markets, chemists, drugstores, opticians, garages, bookstores and flower shops. Schools from kindergarten until secondary school will remain open. Restaurant are allowed to offer take away meals.
In Lucerne had you been downtown this past Saturday, you would have been forgiven to think that there were no new measures in place. Hertensteinstrasse was heaving with people, only about a third of whom were wearing masks. People were definitely not keeping social distance to one another and didn’t seem to be paying much attention to the government’s call for civicism. While it is true that currently the canton has fewer cases than in other cantons (240 new cases on Friday), the hospitals are starting to feel the pressure with more and more people being admitted due to complications. This means that in some hospitals personnel who are in quarantine or even have the virus are being asked to come into work to cope with the overload of work. Surely this isn’t a good thing.
What constitutes a “community mask”? To help consumers decide whether the mask they are buying is really protecting them, the government is preparing some clear guidelines as to what a community mask constitues. Hopefully this will clarify many open questions on the topic.
Enjoy the warm sunny weather today, it’s going to be raining and colder tomorrow and wednesday.
