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Switzerland was one of the first European countries to be affected by the coronavirus pandemic. As with other countries that were affected early, Switzerland took longer to respond than countries that were affected later (Kohler et al. 2020; Wenger et al. 2020), because there were no best practice examples to copy (Plümper and Neumayer 2020). Measured in terms of controlling the coronavirus incidence rate (average number of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants), the country’s response to the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic and its aftermath (March – April 2020) was extraordinarily successful. However, its response to the second wave, which began in late August and reached its preliminary peak in November 2020, was significantly poorer.