Over the five days from 30 April 2020, the daily number of new cases in Switzerland fell consistently.
Last Thursday, 30 April 2020, there were 179 recorded new cases of Covid-19. Over the next five days the figure fell to 28. The last time it was this low was 3 March 2020 at the beginning of the outbreak.
These numbers are encouraging, although they should be taken with a pinch of salt given the peculiarities and daily inconsistencies of testing and data collection.
According to the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH), the total number of recorded cases in Switzerland reached 30,009 on 5 May 2020, with 28 new daily cases. Among these, 1,483 had died, a figure lower than the headline number of 1,790, which includes deaths of people with Covid-19 symptoms that didn’t test positive in a laboratory.
In addition, since 30 April 2020, the daily number of SARS-CoV-2 tests has fallen substantially. On 30 April, 4,837 tests were conducted. By 4 May 2020, the number was down to 663. However, the positivity rate rose from 5% to 8%. Higher positivity sometimes indicates that testing is missing more cases. However, a rise from 5% to 8% over 5 days might not be meaningful. Positivity in Switzerland reached a peak of 36% on 29 March 2020.
So far around 286,403 tests have been conducted for Covid-19 in Switzerland, of which 12.3% have been positive. Countries with low positivity have generally been the most successful at containing the disease. Nations like New Zealand and Australia have positivities around 1%.
Since Tuesday, the number of new cases has risen from 28 to 51 to 66, reaching 81 new daily cases on Friday 8 May 2020.
More on this:
FOPH press release (in French) – Take a 5 minute French test now
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