Cybathlon 2020 postponed due to coronavirus

The de­cision was promp­ted by the un­cer­tainty as to how the coronavirus will de­velop over the com­ing weeks, and the in­ter­na­tional di­men­sion of the Cy­bath­lon – over 25 of the teams that have re­gistered come from Asia and Italy, areas badly hit by the virus.

At the Cy­bath­lon, people with dis­ab­il­it­ies com­pete to mas­ter every­day chal­lenges us­ing as­sist­ive tech­no­logy. As pre­par­a­tions have been in full swing for sev­eral months, ETH Zurich deeply re­grets hav­ing to post­pone the event and any in­con­veni­ence that this may cause for par­ti­cipants. Our top pri­or­ity, how­ever, is the health of the teams, em­ploy­ees, vis­it­ors and nu­mer­ous vo­lun­teers. Now that a new date has been de­cided, we hope that all those in­volved can plan and re­or­gan­ise ac­cord­ingly. Me­dia ac­cred­it­a­tions that have been con­firmed and ad­mis­sion tick­ets that have been pur­chased will re­main valid. 

In view of the rising in­cid­ence of coronavirus, the Fed­eral Coun­cil has cat­egor­ised the situ­ation in Switzer­land as “spe­cial” in terms of the coun­try’s Epi­dem­ics Act, and banned events in­volving more than 1,000 people un­til at least 15 March. ETH Zurich ex­pects 6,000 spec­tat­ors per day at the Cybath-​lon. After con­sulta­tion with the rel­ev­ant health au­thor­it­ies, ETH Zurich, to­gether with the Cy­bath­lon Or­gan­ising Com­mit­tee, has de­cided to post­pone this ma­jor in­ter­na­tional event from the be­gin­ning of May to 19-​20 Septem­ber 2020.