The canton of Lucerne has decided to cancel all school camps for the rest of the school year. This has been met with astonishment as the cantons of Zug, Nidwalden and Uri are all going forward with their school camps by implementing testing and protective measures. Following the motto “better safe than sorry” the canton of Lucerne is sticking to its decision.
Right now most Lucerners are wondering what our local health minister is thinking with regards to the Covid situation. Having shut down the drive-in centre which was run very efficiently because it was not being used enough, he has now put in place a test centre in the Messe halls that is booked out until April 14, the centre ran 400 tests yesterday alone. They do offer a drop-in service but yesterday the waiting time was estimated to be 3 hours. In fact, Alain Berset’s motto of “test, test, test” seems to be failing spectacularly as not enough chemists or venues offer tests and there are no self tests to be found yet. His optimistic call for more people to be able to meet because they can get a quick test before going to their friends is, to date, not realistic at all.
Meanwhile Lucerne is last on the list of cantons for their vaccination rate with only 5% of the local population having been fully vaccinated, the canton of Schaffhausen comes out ahead with 7.8% of its population being fully vaccinated. To date 9.8% of the national population has received at least one vaccine.
The criteria numbers for further openings don’t paint as bad a picture. The 14 day incidence number is at 262,4 (needs to be less than 300). Intensive beds taken by covid patients is at 167 (must be less than 250), hospital admissions average for the last 7 days for covid patients is 40 (must be less than 80). Only the R-rate is over at 1.17 (needs to be less than 1). These numbers must remain under the limits to hope for any further lifting of restrictions by mid-April.
