Cantons discuss further Covid restrictions

Visitors to a Christmas market in Geneva showing their Covid certificates on November 18 Keystone / Martial Trezzini

Additional measures against Covid-19 will soon be taken in Switzerland, reckons Lukas Engelberger, president of the Conference of Cantonal Health Directors.

Discussions are already being held in the cantons about tightening measures, he said in an interviewExternal link with the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper on Monday.

“We find ourselves in a typically Swiss logic: from the bottom up,” he said. “First of all, the cantons are called upon to use our leeway. This is limited, but we now have to try. If we then see that this is not enough, the government will have to take action again.”

In concrete terms, the cantons could extend the obligation to have a Covid certificate to other facilities and areas, for example to visitors and employees in nursing homes or hospitals, Engelberger said.

“The reintroduction of compulsory masks is also possible – for example at events where certification is compulsory or in schools,” he said. However, he doesn’t believe the cantons should question the approach of using certificates, which is prescribed by federal law.

The Swiss Covid certificate has been compulsory since September 13 for admission to restaurants, gyms, cinemas, and big cultural and sporting events. It limits entry to those who have been vaccinated, tested or recovered from Covid-19 (the 3G rule, as it’s known in German).

No government action

Last week Interior Minister Alain Berset ruled out a tightening of anti-Covid measures despite a strong increase in new infections. On Friday the national health authorities reported just over 6,000 confirmed new cases of Covid-19 within the past 24 hours, compared with around 1,200 new cases a month ago.

“We are reluctant to take tougher measures,” Berset said. “Every country has its own policy.”

On Monday neighbouring Austria went into a nationwide lockdown in a desperate effort to contain spiralling coronavirus infections.

On Sunday Swiss voters will decide on the country’s Covid law. This will be the second time in a little less than six months that the Swiss people give their verdict on the same law – a first in the history of Swiss direct democracy. On June 13, the Covid-19 law was accepted by 60.2% of voters and only rejected by some cantons in central and eastern Switzerland, where resistance to the government’s measures to combat coronavirus is concentrated.

Since the beginning of the pandemic 11,000 people in Switzerland have died in connection with Covid-19.