April 1 has been considered a joke day for decades, a global custom that will now be suspended for the first time in 2020. The announcement comes from the highest authority, the World Health Organization (WHO). As it writes in a press release, all countries worldwide have been instructed not to include April 1 in their calendars this year, but to move directly from March 31 to April 2 tomorrow, Wednesday. The WHO is thus preventing silly jokes, which it is not at all in the mood for in Corona times.

The WHO also states that April 1 will be compensated for by February 29. As 2020 is a leap year, it will last one day longer than the other years anyway. The leap day of February 29 will be made up for in 2021 in order to secure the long-term calendar balance. Countries such as Switzerland and Germany will comply with the WHO's requirement after consultation. Large technology companies such as Apple, Microsoft and Google, which together manage 94% of the world's digital calendars, will also remove April 1 from their calendars. Appointments that have already been booked will automatically be moved to April 2, and calendar users will be informed immediately by email if there are any conflicts.

According to the WHO, this measure is a one-off and is due to the fact that the world organization cannot prohibit April 1st jokes per se. By banning the date, it is pre-empting all those who are incomprehensibly still in the mood for jokes during the coronavirus pandemic.Mountain bike magazines such as Ride.ch have regularly used April 1st to poke fun at their readers with original but fictitious reports. In recent years, Ride has reported that there are now e-mountainbikes with a nuclear drive, that e-bikes can be charged at pasture fences in Graubünden or that the snow cannons in Lenzerheide are turned around in spring to blow the snow off the trails with warm air.