A throbbing après-ski bar packed shoulder to shoulder with merrymakers, so jammed that bartenders use whistles to summon patrons for their drinks.

One of those bartenders at the Kitzloch, a 36-year-old German national – unbeknownst to him – was COVID-19 positive.

From that single individual, it is believed, coronavirus cascaded among hundreds of ski bunnies. From that resort in the Alpine village Ischgl, 1,377 meters high in the Austrian alps, infection spread unhindered.

Coronavirus likes revelry too.

Ischgl, a ski paradise tucked amidst 200 kilometers of glistening snow slopes — calls itself “White Winter’s Dream’’— has a permanent population of only 1,600 people. But it boasts a million overnight visitors during the ski season. The economy depends on tourists.

But it was also a perfect incubator for COVID-19.

So, from Ischgl, a radiating circumference of happy holiday trippers returned home this month, boarding trains, planes, chartered buses that crossed borders, into northern Europe, into Scandinavia and the United Kingdom. Flinging contamination across the continent.

One bartender. Now 1,746 positive coronavirus case in Norway, (as of the weekend), 40 per cent of them blamed on the outbreak that began in Ischgl. Now, 1,439 positive cases in Sweden, half blamed on contact with people who’d been to Ischgl or the friends, family members and complete strangers who’d brushed up against them. In Denmark, health officials said 500 diagnosed positives were linked to travel in Austria, 300 from Tyrol. A quarter of all infected Austrians have been traced to the nexus of Ischgl.

Droplets from sneezing and coughing; microbes left on things they’d touched.

Yet authorities had been warned, very early in the pandemic’s emergence. Government and health authorities in the province of Tyrol who – the accusation – dismissed alarm bells that were ringing. Instead they prioritized resort operators over public health, buckling to the tourism industry and the mountain railway lobby, criticism heatedly refuted.

On Feb. 29, an Icelandair flight from Munich – a transit point for many of Tyrolean visitors – landed in Reykjavik with a travel group that had been skiing in Ischgl appearing ill. Fifteen in the group tested positive.

On March 4, Iceland formally classified Ischgl as a high-risk area, on the same level as Iran, South Korea and Wuhan.

It was public knowledge by then, for anyone paying attention, as surely state and national governments would have been. In Ischgl, however, tow bars and chairlifts and gondolas continued to operate, the station situated right next to the Kitzloch.

The German bartender was diagnosed on March 7. Not to worry, officials assured. “From a medical point of view,’’ the Tyrolean state medical directory said in statement the following day, “it is highly unlikely that there are contagions in Tyrol.’’

Except it is now known the bartender infected at least 15 people in his immediate environment.

And the band played on.

No quarantine. No self-isolating. Not until March 10 were the après-bars in Ischgl ordered closed. At a bar called the Blue Monkey, guests were invited to an “Apocalypse Night’’ before the establishment closed its doors: Corona and shot of tequila for six Euros. More carousing at The Champagne Shack.

An editorial in the Vienna daily newspaper, Der Standard, slammed authorities: “Greed has defeated the responsibility for the health of the citizens and the guests. They wanted to take this last tourist week so that the cash registers of lift operators and hoteliers rang.’’

On March 13, belatedly, the Austrian government declared Ischgl and the entire Paznaan Valley a risk area. But two days later, ski lifts were still carrying skiing enthusiasts up and down the mountain.

Next day, foreign tourists were told to leave because the region would put movement restrictions. The outgoing mob was directed to proceed directly home. Which for many, of course, was not possible. Hundreds overnighted in Innsbruck hotels, waiting on morning flights.

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By March 19, drastic measures had finally been undertaken, the government lock-down quarantining 279 towns and villages in Tyrol until at least April 5.

The end-of-season Ischgl festival, scheduled for May 2 – Mariah Carey, Elton John and Lenny Kravitz have all played that famous gig – was cancelled, the season now declared closed.

An anesthesiologist from Salzburg, who’d vacationed in Ischgl and has tested positive, had contact with upwards of a thousand people – in his personal life and in his professional life – who have had to be tested. One of them was his wife, who’s also tested positive. She worked as a nurse in the hospital’s premature infant unit, handling dozens of infants.

Austria now has 3,580 positive COVID-19 cases including 16 deaths.

In Germany – where authorities are still trying to track down 200 people who’d been on a bus trip to Ischgl – the federal health minister last week stated bluntly: “The outbreak we have at the moment has a lot to do with people return from skiing holiday.’’

In Germany, 24,852 people have tested positive for COVID-19 including 94 people who died.

Journalists who descended on Ischgl to report the story have also been infected.

Werner Kurz, mayor of Ischgl for the past decade, tells Der Spiegel by phone: “Essentially, it is a catastrophe for Ischgl. We aren’t yet talking about the economic consequences. We will overcome that, just as we have been able to overcome flooding and avalanches in the past.’’

Except avalanches do their damage and then it’s over. The calamity isn’t transported to neighbouring countries.

Yet Kurz added: “We implemented all the regulations in a timely manner.’’

Clearly they did not. Clearly they were not compelled to do so.

Ischgl: A coronavirus hot zone in the snow-covered mountains.

Rosie DiManno is a columnist based in Toronto covering sports and current affairs. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno

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