ZURICH – Students in the Swiss city of Basel falsified positive Covid-19 results in an attempt to skip school, quarantining the entire class and now disciplinary action against the perpetrators after the hoax was discovered.
Three students at Kirschgarten High School in Basel faked text messages from the Covid-19 contact tracking app in Switzerland, Swiss newspaper Blick reported.
That forced about 25 classmates to be locked up at home for about 10 days. Just before spring break in March, several teachers were also affected by the incident.
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“This is not just a childish joke, this is a serious incident,” Simon Thiriet, a spokesman for Basel’s education department, told Blick.
The school intends to prosecute for falsifying “health-related documents”, but does not intend to expel them. Thiriet said the pandemic puts students in a “difficult situation,” but that is no excuse for the trio ‘s stunt.