Isolation and quarantine period to be shortened to 5 days
The Federal Council has decided to shorten the isolation period from ten to five days from Thursday, 13 January. However, in order to come out of isolation, the person concerned must be symptom-free for 48 hours.
Contact quarantine is also to be shortened to five days. Quarantine is to be limited to persons who live in the same household as someone who has tested positive or who has had close contact in other ways. Persons who have had their last dose of vaccine or who have recovered from COVID-19 within the last four months are exempted.
The federal council is putting the following measures to consultation to the cantons:
The measures put in place on December 17 and due to end on January 24 should be extended until end of March. This means that 2G will continue to be required for indoor venues, home office requirement is to be extended and no more than 10 people can meet indoors when one person is neither vaccinated nor immunised.
The Federal Council also plans to reduce the period of validity of all forms of vaccination certificate from 365 to 270 days and so ensure that the certificate remains valid in the EU. Certificates issued as proof of recovery from COVID-19 will also only be valid for 270 days. The cantons will also be consulted on the proposal to shorten the period of validity. This should come into effect from 1 February.
The Federal Council is also using the consultation to submit further questions to the cantons – for example, on the ban on face-to-face teaching at tertiary level, capacity restrictions for large-scale events, extending mandatory mask-wearing, capacity in the area of acute beds, compulsory pre-entry testing for vaccinated and recovered persons, adapting the testing strategy due to the heavy workload of the testing laboratories, dispensing with rapid antigen tests and on lifting quarantine rules.
These measures will most probably be approved in the coming days.
More information from the official government website here.
