More than 400 British tourists “escaped” from the exclusive Swiss ski resort of Verbier, after being forced to quarantine there.
Visitors were ordered by Swiss authorities to isolate their accommodation for 10 days after the UK announced it had detected a new highly transmissible coronavirus mutation.
The discovery of the mutation, which spread across the UK, causing an increase in COVID-19 infection rates, has prompted many countries, including Switzerland, to close their borders to British visitors.
As of midnight on December 20, Switzerland has banned flights from the UK, but has also put in place a retroactive quarantine.
This means that about 420 Britons who had already arrived at the village of Verbier – one of Europe’s leading ski resorts and a popular destination with British royalty – were told they would have to return immediately to their accommodation and avoid any contact with the outside world.
The wealthy visitors had other ideas. On Sunday morning, hoteliers informed employees that breakfast trays were being left untouched outside the guest rooms, and calls to the rooms were unanswered. Daily Telegraph reports.
The newspaper said that of the 420 Britons identified by the authorities as being at the luxury resort when the quarantine was hurriedly applied, less than a dozen remained on Sunday. The laws implemented would mean that breaking the quarantine could result in a fine of up to 10,000 Swiss francs ($ 11,220).
Some guests may have legally left under a measure announced by the Swiss authorities on Christmas Eve, which would allow quarantined Britons to return home if they warned the regional authorities about their mode of transport.
Some of the British tourists affected in Verbier left immediately, while others held on for a while before giving up and running away, according to a local newspaper.
“Many of them were quarantined for a day before leaving unnoticed under the cover of darkness,” said Jean-Marc Sandoz, spokesman for the municipality in general, to the SonntagsZeitung.
He called the whole situation “the worst week our community has ever experienced”.
Sandoz told the ATS news agency: “It was when they saw that the food trays remained untouched that the hoteliers realized that the customers were gone.”
He said he believed that less than 10 people would still be quarantined and the rest would have left or their isolation time would have ended, adding: “We can’t blame them. In most cases, the 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 Public Health Office (FOPH), saying that passenger information was delivered too late. He said: “Passenger data was missing. Our work has become unnecessarily difficult. “
The FOPH denied and said it had requested airline data for the 92 UK flights that arrived since 14 December and gave the cantons the information on Wednesday.
However, Simon Wiget, the director of the Verbier Tourism Office, told the Daily Telegraph that the rules were confusing.
“We called all hotels and tour operators and said that people who traveled from the UK had to announce themselves to the Swiss authorities. We identified about 350 people, but there might be 500 people if all owners of a second home and guests in private cottages were included; it was impossible to be sure.
“Perhaps some people thought they were running away, but I think the vast majority would have believed that they were acting within the law and responsibly. People are basically honest and don’t break the law on purpose. It’s all very confusing, even for us. The new rules were established so quickly and the situation is changing so quickly that tourists have done what they can. “
Switzerland has come under heavy criticism for keeping ski resorts open during the pandemic, with critics attributing skyrocketing infection rates to the decision.