Ischgl, the small ski resort in Tyrol which has become a hotbed of coronavirus: from there the infection spread to half of Europe

By now we should have learned that a few days late means infecting hundreds which then become thousands. It is the monopoly of the coronavirus, only that the tokens are lives to be saved. But business comes first and the skiing holiday in Tyrol could not be renounced. And so the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, an authority in epidemic research, has identified in the ski resort of Ischgl in Tyrol coronavirus infection outbreak, compared by exponential curve of contagions to China, Iran and Lombardy, as wrote the Financial Timeson March 21. According to the estimates of the RKI, the laboratories in Germany have equipped themselves to make carpet swabs at a rate of 160 thousand per week (in South Korea which, due to its containment force, has become a case-study studied by the WHO, 15 thousand were made per day). And the data that emerged are that 80 percent of positive patients are less than 60 years old. And that at the beginning of the pandemic many of them had returned from skiing in Tyrol, taking the virus home. And even if they were asymptomatic or with mild symptoms, they infected the elderly.

On February 29 in Iceland they turned out positive 15 people returning from Ischgl and some of them had been to a bar where the barman tested positive. Also half of the infected in Norway, a third in Denmark and a sixth of the infected patients in Sweden, all had been skiing in Ischgl. And while, at the beginning of the pandemic in Europe, Austria immediately closed its borders with the south (and therefore with Italy), flights, trains and buses continued to bring tourists to ski in Tyrol. Previously, the Tyrolean authorities tried to deny the connection between the infected and the immaculate peaks and the plants were closed only on Sunday 15 March by order.
Nor had it been enough for Germany to declare Tyrol a high-risk area, after the authorities of Ostalb, in Baden-Wuerttenberg, launched the last desperate alarm: 200 people who had been on the bus to Ischgl had tested positive. And the mortality curve in Germany that now sees it in last place (42 deaths up to it) is unfortunately destined to reverse.

Facebook page of Januaria Piromallo

Vignette by Guido Ciompi

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