Townhall on the Covid 19 situation at ETH Zurich
A week ago, the Federal Council announced numerous easing measures. What these mean for ETH Zurich was explained by members of the Executive Board and the ETH Covid 19 Taskforce at the virtual Townhall. Now the recording of the event is available.
1200 ETH members joined the Townhall on Wednesday to learn about ETH Zurich's current Covid measures. The focus of the event was the outlook for the upcoming master plan as well as the new testing facility on campus. Rector Sarah Springman welcomed the participants on behalf of the entire Executive Board and addressed in her remarks complementary, mask-to-mask, learning opportunities for students. ETH task force leader Ulrich Weidmann gave an outlook on the measures of the new master plan, which will come into force next Monday, 26 April. The plan will be published this Friday and will change little for most employees: the home office obligation will apply until further notice. This fact will continue to cause discomfort for many of us in the coming weeks. Julia Dannath, Vice President for Human Resources Development and Leadership, is also aware of this situation. She stressed how important mutual support is at the moment and pointed out ways in which we can continue to keep motivation high.
Lively Q&A session
A novelty is the Covid test station at ETH Zurich, which started operations on Tuesday. Jörg Goldhahn, Head of the Institute for Translational Medicine, presented the PCR testing programme of ETH. The test kits from the converted Selecta machines are intended for ETH members who need to be present at ETH and should thus make an important contribution to containing the virus. Numerous questions in the subsequent Q&A session showed that the test programme met with great interest. But not only the tests, but also the voluntary attendance options for students, vaccination options, gastronomic offers and other Covid topics made for a lively question and answer session.
Recording available
If you missed the Townhall, the recording is available below in both German and English. Unfortunately, during the live event, the simultaneous translation function did not work for those participants who dialled into Zoom after the event began. The problem has been reported to Zoom and should not occur again at the next townhalls. The recording is not affected.
Recording of the Townhall from 21 April 2021
Further information
All information on the measures taken by ETH Zurich in connection with the corona virus can be found on the Corona website. The new master plan will also be available there on Friday.