International COVID-19 Megathread

[Jens]

Status in Denmark
Yesterday, the PM announced complete closure of all educational institutions and childcare, public libraries, sports facilities ect, all non essential public employees are sent home, public transport is restricted, no indoor events with more that a hundred participants and the closure of all bars, pubs and nighth clubs.
All non essential operations and treatments are cancelled and everybody with a health education is being mobillised
Currently there is about 600 infected, no deads

Parliament is debatting strict new legislation tonight that will give the Minister of Health huge powers (with a sunset clause)

The country is basically shuting down after we have seen an exponential rise in the number of infected in the last few days.

About 130 infected has been on vacantion at the same wintersport resort in Austria...

[Jens]

Police and health workers are now indeed checking EVERY single car and truck coming in from Italy ... resulting in a 100 km (60 mile) traffic jam today at the Brenner crossing down to Bozen !

Truck drivers have to wait 2 days in line on the highway to pass into Austria.

LOL.

Looks like a large number of infected in DK, was infected in Austria...

[Jens]

Heavy critique is mounting at the Ischgl ski resort in Tyrol and the ÖVP-Green government in Tyrol + Governor Platter:

On March 5 (!) already, Icelandic officials declared the Ischgl ski resort a „hotbed“ of infections.

More than 1.000 Scandinavian tourists infected themselves in hotels during vacation there and brought the virus with them into the North.

Ischgl did nothing.

Greed led to ski lifts being open until yesterday (!) afternoon, with huts full of guests sunbathing next to each other or in gondolas or lifts.

Hotels, sunbathing, gondolas and lifts...

More than anything else Ischgl (and some other places like St. Anton and Sölden) is known for being an international winter party destination, the "Alpen-Ballermann" (Alpine spring break) with its "Après-Ski". The local clubs, discotheques and bars are known for overcrowding and massive alcohol consumption. At least one club employee has been tested positive for COVID-19.

Ideal conditions for accelerating an international pandemia.

But the Tyrolean government said that it was "highly unlikely" that a whole group of Icelanders got infected in Ischgl and said that it was more likely that one of them got it somewhere and then transmitted it on the flight...

The Danish government and health authorities are quite clearly saying that a major reason for the spread in DK is the fact that they didn't know that Tirol was a hotbed for infection. About 140 of the first 400 cases (before we stopped testing people without symptoms) had been skiing at Ischlg... And most of them had been at a bar where all the waiters were infected!