Switzerland has overtaken Belgium and is on pace to surpass Czech Republic as Europe’s top COVID-19 hot spot. Infections are roughly triple the per capita count in Sweden or the United States and double the European Union average. And this is not due to extensive testing. Switzerland is on par with the United States and average in Europe with regard to test prevalence. The country’s test-positivity rate stands at a whopping 27.9 percent, compared with 8.5 percent in Sweden and 8.3 percent in the United States. According to the World Health Organization, a test-positivity rate above 5 percent signals the virus is out of control.
The group of scientific experts advising the Swiss government on the pandemic has been sounding the alarm bell for a while. Hospitals are projected to run out of ICU capacity by Nov. 13. The challenge now is to keep the period of rationing of intensive health care as short as possible, the expert group says.
