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Economic Business Association calls for shorter quarantine - TOP ONLINE

Economic Business Association calls for shorter quarantine – TOP ONLINE

As of Wednesday, about 86,000 people are in isolation in Switzerland, and 33,000 people are well in quarantine. With the rapidly expanding Omikron variant, the number of people isolated or in quarantine is expected to continue to increase.

Loss of employees is already a problem for some companies and they have to cut production or reduce supply. For example, the city bus Winterthur or SZU-Bahn. The umbrella organization for the Swiss economy, Economiesuisse, expects these bottlenecks to worsen over the next few days. Therefore, they encourage a cost-benefit review of the rules in place regarding isolation and quarantine.

The federal government currently states that the isolation must last ten days. However, most cantons followed the federal government’s recommendation and reduced the quarantine from ten to seven days.

New insights into the infection stage

The United States is one step ahead of Switzerland in this regard. On December 27, 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shortened the duration of the isolation and quarantine. Infected people who are in isolation after testing positive and people who are in contact who are quarantined can move freely again after five days, provided they are free of symptoms.

The CDC bases its decision on current scientific knowledge. They say that the majority of infections occur in the early stages of the disease. That is, a day or two before symptoms appear and two to three days after that. Therefore, the CDC believes that a period of five days is sufficient to reduce the risk of infection posed by an infected person.

Failure prevention and limitations

In a press release, Economiesuisse is calling for quarantine and isolation to be shortened to five days for asymptomatic people at this time. This can reduce the risk of production interruption and there should be fewer restrictions on infrastructure. In addition, residents can resume their daily lives early.