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A tourist wearing a protective mask walks past a Christmas tree in the resort
Hundreds of British tourists forced into quarantine in the Swiss ski resort of Verbier fled overnight rather than see their holidays deteriorate, the local municipality said on Sunday.
About 200 of the approximately 420 British tourists assigned to the luxury alpine ski resort have resigned under cover of darkness, the SonntagsZeitung newspaper reported.
Swiss ski resorts were on the verge of a boom in UK tourists looking for snow – but a flight ban due to the new Covid-19 variant raging in England put those plans on ice.
The drastic decision by the Swiss government also provided for a 10-day retroactive quarantine for anyone arriving from Britain since December 14, following the discovery of a new variant of the coronavirus which experts fear will spread further. quickly.
Some of the British tourists assigned to Verbier left immediately, while others got a bit stuck before leaving.
“Many of them remained in quarantine for a day before leaving undetected under cover of darkness,” Jean-Marc Sandoz, spokesperson for the commune of Bagnes, told SZ.
He called the situation “the worst week our community has ever seen”.
British tourists normally represent 21% of Verbier’s clientele, and most start flocking just after Christmas.
Voted the best ski resort in Switzerland for the past two years, Verbier presents itself as offering “thrills, simple pleasures and a chic lifestyle”.
The Verbier Tourist Office organizes daily crisis cell meetings to try to deal with the constantly evolving situation of the coronavirus.
– Breakfast intact –
“It was when they saw that the meal trays remained intact that the hoteliers noticed that the customers were gone,” Sandoz told the ATS news agency.
He said that according to a Saturday survey of hotels in the ski resort, fewer than 10 people are still in quarantine.
The others would have left or their quarantine period would have expired.
“We can’t blame them. In most cases the quarantine was untenable. Imagine four people staying in a 20 square meter hotel room,” Sandoz said.
According to him, the tourists left “a little angry with Switzerland” and with the feeling of having been “trapped”.
Flights between Switzerland and the two countries were halted on Monday, but the first outbound flights from Zurich to Britain resumed on Thursday.
Two cases of the new British variant of the coronavirus have been detected in Switzerland and one in neighboring Liechtenstein, the Swiss Ministry of Health announced on Sunday.
Two cases of the new South African variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for Covid-19, have also been detected, the ministry said.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
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