More than 400 British tourists have “escaped” from the exclusive Swiss ski resort of Verbier, after being ordered to be quarantined there.
Swiss authorities ordered visitors to isolate their accommodation for 10 days after the UK announced it had detected a new highly transmissible mutation of the coronavirus.
The discovery of the mutation, which has swept across the UK, causing an increase in COVID-19 infection rates, led many countries, including Switzerland, to close their borders to British visitors.
As of midnight on December 20, Switzerland banned flights from the UK, but also established a retroactive quarantine.
This meant that some 420 Britons who had already arrived in the village of Verbier – one of the main ski resorts in Europe and a popular destination among the British – were told that they should return to their accommodation immediately and avoid any contact with the outside world. .
Visitors with heels had other ideas. On Sunday morning, hoteliers informed officials that the breakfast trays were left intact outside the guest rooms and that calls to the rooms went unanswered. Daily Telegraph reports.
The newspaper claims that of the 420 Britons identified by the authorities as the luxury complex when the hasty quarantine was applied, there were less than a dozen left by Sunday. Implemented laws would mean that breaking the quarantine could result in a fine of up to 10,000 Swiss francs ($ 11,220).
Some guests may have left legally according to a measure announced by the Swiss authorities on Christmas Eve, which allowed quarantined Britons to return home if they alerted regional authorities of their mode of transport.
Some of the British tourists affected in Verbier left immediately, while others left him out for a short time before surrendering and fleeing, according to a local newspaper.
“Many of them remained in quarantine one day before going unnoticed under cover of darkness,” he told Jean-Marc Sandoz, a spokesman for the wider municipality. Sunday newspaper.
He described the whole situation as “the worst week our community has experienced.”
Sandoz told the ATS news agency: “It was when they saw that the food trays had not been touched that hoteliers realized that customers had gone.”
He said he believed less than ten people would still be in quarantine and the rest would have left or ended their isolation time, adding: “We can’t blame them. In most cases, quarantine was unsustainable. Imagine four people staying in a 20-square-meter hotel room. ”
Christophe Darbellay, the president of the local government, said: “There is a sense of personal responsibility. You can travel all over Europe without having to identify yourself. The border is a sieve. “
He criticized the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH), saying passenger information was delivered too late. He said: “Passenger data was missing. Our work became unnecessarily difficult. “
The OFSP denied this and said it had requested airline data for the 92 flights from the UK that had arrived since 14 December and gave the information to the cantons on Wednesday.
However, Simon Wiget, the director of the Verbier Tourist Office, told Daily Telegraph that the rules were confusing.
“We called all the hotels and tour operators and said that people who had traveled from the UK had to report to the Swiss authorities. We identified about 350 people, but perhaps there were 500 people if all owners of second homes and private villas were included; it was impossible to be sure.
“Maybe some people might have thought they were escaping, but I think the vast majority would have thought they were acting within the law and responsibly. People are basically honest and don’t break the law on purpose. Everything is very confusing, even for us. The new rules came together so quickly and the situation is changing so fast that tourists did what they could. “
Switzerland has received strong criticism for keeping ski resorts open during the pandemic, and critics have attributed infection rates to the decision.