tv Our World BBC News March 7, 2021 9:30pm-10:01pm GMT
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hopes for nazanin zaghari—ratcliffe, as she is released from house arrest in iran. but a new court case against her is scheduled for next week it's not the release we wanted. it is not that ticket home and the passport back and her coming home to us. schools in england re—open to all pupils tomorrow — the first step in easing the coronavirus lockdown. the queen stresses the importance of staying in touch with friends and family in a message to mark commonwealth day, just hours before the duke and duchess of sussex's interview with oprah winfrey. pope francis on the final day of his visit to iraq, greeted by thousands for an outdoor mass in irbil. now on bbc new, our world. bbc europe editor katya adler explores what went wrong at the austrian resort of ischgl at the start of the global pandemic and asks what lessons can be learned.
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ischgl has long been known as the ibiza of the alps. but this time last year, the austrian ski resort became famous for something else. you always think the worst, especially when you get a positive result for covid. i even got people last day coming in, like coughing and spluttering and, like, saying... coughing sound. .."covid. " the authorities were slow to lockdown, with disastrous results. there was a whiff of the old jaws film and the mayor standing up in front of the tv cameras saying, "there's no shark here." ischgl became known as europe's covid ground zero. more than 6,000 people believe they were infected here in a matter of days. tourists returning home exported the virus around the world. now, the families of those affected are demanding justice.
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their allegation, that local authorities put wealth over health, keeping peak ski season going, even as the virus spread. one year on, what lessons can be learned from the unhappy story of ischgl? we need to be expecting all kinds of different viruses. this is going to happen again, i can assure you. is carefree mass tourism as we know it in europe a thing of the past? the ski season in ischgl in early 2020 seemed pretty much perfect. haraldur was one of the thousands enjoying the slopes.
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we actually had a really good week. ischgl is one of the best ski resorts in europe. it has good variety of slopes and good restaurants. after skiing, he and his friends grabbed a beer at the kitzloch — one of ischgl�*s famous apres ski bars. singing. hundreds of people just having fun, drinking and singing. there were a lot of different people from all over the world coming to ischgl. here in the kitzloch especially, a lot of danish, norwegian. of course a lot of german people are coming, also a lot from the united kingdom. but last february, ski hire workers spotted something strange. what we started to notice was that more and more customers who were bringing their skis back into the ski hire shop mid week, returning them early. it was more of a case of, well, this is weird, this is not normal, why is this? then you think well, my god, this is a pretty
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rough flu season now. come and check this out with me today, it's beautiful. but it wasn't the flu, it was covid. the virus had already been detected in the italian alps and elsewhere in austria. and it was now in ischgl. at that time, there was no coronavirus testing in the resort. for weeks, the authorities had closed their eyes to the spread of the virus. gunther zangerl is a leading local businessmen. he owns ischgl�*s cable car company. haraldur�*s friend arnie was one of those who became unwell in late february. he started feeling
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ill on wednesday. he thought he had the flu. we were not associating his illness with covid. on their return to iceland, both haraldur and arnie tested positive. i was not feeling ill or anything, so it was quite a shock because the news from italy wasn't great. a lot of people dying there, so you always think the worst, especially when you get a positive result from covid. in reykjavik, the test results landed on the desk of iceland's chief epidemiologist. for weeks, he'd been watching the spread of coronavirus from china, and now he knew he needed to act fast. i was excited, actually, because we had been preparing for this for many, many years. dr gudnason began to spot a pattern. the majority of iceland's positive
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cases had been on holiday in ischgl. austria appeared to have a much bigger covid problem than it realised. it was kind of strange to me at the time, that officially they were only a few cases reported from austria, the whole country, so something really didn't...didn't match, actually. doctor gudnason raised the alarm. he reported the covid cases to the european union and sent a direct message to his austrian counterparts. iceland's government then put ischgl in the same travel category as wuhan. it's what happens next that's still so hotly contested. the regional government in austria's tyrol province now faced a major crisis which would end up costing both lives and money. for years, they'd marketed ischgl as a good time ski resort.
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many local businesses rely on the ski season for their annual income. covid threatened all that. rather than lock ischgl down, the authorities issued a press release saying the icelandic tourists had probably caught covid on the plane home. i mean, that'sjust total nonsense. my friend was already sick while we were in ischgl, and there is no way that all of us got infected on the flight because we were not all travelling together. an e—mail sent at the time showed that local tyrol politicians hoped the plane theory would be enough to get ischgl "out of the firing line", as they wrote. the recipient of the e—mail subsequently leaked, but not denied, was herbert forster.
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so, ischgl wasn't shut down, and no warnings were issued to skiers. saturday the 7th of march was changeover day. thousands of tourists were going home, thousands more arriving. perfect conditions for a highly contagious virus to spread. british couple david mills and christine harris were amongst the new arrivals. the place was great, it was buzzing, it was like benidorm on steroids. when we got there we thought, whoa, this was so busy, wasn't it? yeah. it was absolutely jampacked. all of the bars were on, like, a strip, and we went to several of them. one of them was kitzloch. you couldn't get a drink.
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you couldn't get a drink, we walked right round the bar. that evening, the manager of the kitzloch bar, bernhard zangerl, got a phone call. hours before, one of his staff had had a covid test after feeling ill. i was not watching on the phone and in the evening at about nine or ten o'clock, i had about maybe ten phone calls on my phone and i was thinking, 0k, what is going on? the test was positive. it meant the authorities could no longer put off taking action. yeah, of course it was a shock, we were sitting after this information with my colleagues at the bar, and we were yes, talking about the topic and everybody was kind of shocked. the kitzloch bar closed, but only for 2h hours. they were told they could reopen once they'd disinfected the venue and changed over the staff. meanwhile, all the other bars in ischgl stayed open. the regional government put out
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he's a consumer rights lawyer leading efforts to hold the austrian government to account for what happened last year in ischgl, and, he says, to try and prevent anything like this from happening again. it's one of many cases being brought against governments worldwide for the way they've handled the pandemic. had the authorities closed a week earlier,
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after the icelandic tourists fell ill, thousands of people who arrived afterwards might have avoided infection. take nigel mallander. i did actually check the foreign office travel advice before going. the foreign office said, you know, it's ok to travel. so i thought, well, why not? i'll go and spend a few days skiing. the bars in ischgl were still wide open for business. it was chock—a—block full of people. there was no indication at all that there was any problem in the town, as far as coronavirus was concerned. it was just business as usual. on friday the 13th of march, eight days after the alarm had
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been raised by iceland, austria's chancellor, sebastian kurz, suddenly decided to bypass the local authorities in tyrol and take action himself. he announced that tourists had just one hour to leave ischgl. anyone left in the resort would be put in quarantine. what followed was utter chaos. i got a phone call about 2:00 in the afternoon from the young lady at my hotel, and she said, "you must get back here. "you must leave the valley. "the valley is being put into quarantine. "so you must get back here and leave." and i thought, well, that's novel!
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i was walking back towards the shop, and a friend of mine came screeching up in his car. it was like a die hard, bruce willis, like, handbrake turn, almost. "they're closing the whole valley in an hour, if you don't get out "now, you're not getting out at all, we need to get out, mate!" throw everything in a suitcase... l and it literally was throwing everything in a suitcase for you. and everybody was like, "what's happening, what's going on?" so you imagine people screaming off in their cars, like, driving at crowds, and just going for the main road. and that was the thing that got me. i thought, my god, people are seriously panicking now. they're seriously frightened. and then i had the whole chaos of the shop. people were just coming in, they didn't want to wait, they were just chucking their skis, one after the other, into the shop. didn't care what was happening. chucking their boots in, chucking their skis in. i was like, oh, my god. we had, like, 200 skis or so coming back that day,
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so i had no idea what was going on. i even got people on that last day coming in, like, coughing and spluttering, and were saying "covid." it wasn't just the tourists who were blindsided by the announcement. gunther sangherl was on the local covid management board. tourists packed onto buses and coaches. police roadblocks were set up to check who was leaving. but with no proper procedures in place, these checks led to huge delays.
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it took from 5:00 till, oh, i about midnight, wasn't it? it was about a seven—hour coach trip~ _ we were on that coach, - it crawled down the mountain. it's absolutely guaranteed that anybody that wasn't infected with the virus when they left ischgl was probably absolutely drenched in it by the time they got down the valley. the botched evacuation was the last in a string of costly mistakes by the austrian authorities, local and national. it's thought that skiers returning home from ischgl and surrounding resorts exported covid to as many as 45 countries, as far—flung as brazil and australia. more than 6000 people believe they were infected, and at least 16 people died. within a week of getting back to britain, david,
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christine and nigel all had covid. nigel was taken to hospital. the girls were standing in the hallway. and there was — there was a real feeling, in my own mind, i thought... i'm walking out of my house now, and, i... i didn't know whether i'd be coming back on my feet or in a box. one year on, many of those caught up in the scarring events are still searching for answers. an independent enquiry details what it called "momentous miscalculations" in how the local authorities dealt with the virus at the time. some of those involved now face a criminal investigation. so did the authorities intentionally
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put wealth over health? the apparent lack of common sense in how they went about doing what they did, there was a whiff of the old jaws film and the mayor of amity island standing up in front of the tv cameras saying, "there's no shark here." this is vigorously denied by the authorities in ischgl and the wider tyrol region. dorte is clear on where she believes responsibility lies.
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the global tourism industry has already lost more than $1 trillion so far as a result of the pandemic. in europe, austria has been one of the countries hardest hit. ischgl now lies deserted, but some here believe better times will soon return. even after this pandemic ends, will travel and tourism ever return to what we once
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thought was normal? tourism and travel of people from one place to another has been very open, and easy, within europe. and in my mind, that's probably played a big role. and the free movement of people from one area to another is going to be probably much more restrictive, i would think. from here we need to be expecting all kinds of different viruses. this is going to happen again, i can assure you. if it does happen again, europe will need to have a strategy, and a better early warning system in place. otherwise, the risk is more pain and more grief. the human tragedy of ischgl highlights dilemmas posed
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by covid to governments the world over. one year on, many of us are still left wondering, if calamity strikes again, can we now trust those in power to make tough decisions fast and put our welfare first? hello. well, let's see what's happening on the weather front in the week ahead, and some big changes on the way. the current settled weather is going to give way to far more unsettled conditions
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by the time we get to midweek. at the moment, high pressure is stilljust about in charge of the weather on monday across the south of the uk, so that means clearer and calmer conditions for places like wales and the south coast. in fact, a touch of frost in plymouth early in the morning on monday, but notice how much milder it is for the north. that's because the wind is changing direction, the cloud is moving in — some of it rain—bearing cloud — and this is the start, the very beginning of this more unsettled weather heading our way. now, monday, the best of the weather will be in the south with some sunshine, perhaps in london, too. 10 degrees, but in the western aisles, it'll be damp. this is tuesday now, and the high pressure is slipping further south and now giving way by this stage to the first area of low pressure, which is actually only going to be brushing us. so, we're talking about gale force winds around the western aisles here, and eventually some rain also brushing the northwest of the uk. but the bulk of tuesday is actually going to be fine for most of us —
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some sunshine for birmingham, norwich and london. so, that was tuesday. this is wednesday's jet stream pattern, and a powerfuljet stream racing across the atlantic, making a beeline for us and also spawning a very strong area of low pressure. in fact, two of them — one moving to the north, this next bigger one heading our way. now, this is very early on wednesday morning. the centre of this low pressure with the worst of the weather at this stage in the central north atlantic, but the winds and the rain extends way towards the east, so already on wednesday morning across ireland and the uk, the weather will be going downhill. the winds will be freshening around the east coast up to gale force already on wednesday afternoon, and i think by the time we get to wednesday night, it'll be wet and windy pretty much across the board and the worst of the weather will start to develop wednesday night. 0ut towards the west of the uk, it'll turn stormy on coasts and those very strong winds will be moving inland as well, so we'll see gales developing lightly in inland areas.
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let's have a closer look, and here's wednesday night with this nasty area of low pressure. a lot of isobars there, and the peak winds at this stage with heavy rain sweeping across ireland and then moving to the uk early on thursday morning. i think the middle of the day on thursday could be extremely blustery with heavy rain moving swiftly on, damaging gusts in places. but because the wind is pushing the rain very quickly, the skies will probably clear, so it actually may even be quite sunny towards the end of thursday, but still remaining very blustery. now, friday, the atlantic is still very much seeing low pressures sweeping across, so the weather will remain very unsettled into friday as well. so, here's an overview of the week ahead. so, you can see monday and tuesday, the weather looks relatively settled and the rain and the wind picks up on wednesday, and after that, it stays very unsettled. now, this is next weekend, and actually, into next week, the north atlantic is dominated by low pressure, so that means that the weather stays unsettled.
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hopes for nazanin zaghari—ratcliffe as she is released from house arrest in iran. her ankle tag was removed today as a five—year sentence came to an end. separated from her young daughter, she now faces a court hearing on another charge. her husband says the ordeal is not over: my emotional reaction is quite guarded about what this means, and we're still in the middle of it. we're still in the middle of it. as the prime minister calls for nazanin�*s permanent release and return home, we'll have the latest. also tonight: a big day for millions of children tomorrow as schools in england reopen to all pupils — a first step in easing the covid lockdown. the queen's message on the importance of duty as she marks commonwealth day.
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