Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

BASEL

Swiss canton Basel-City cuts quarantine period from Monday

The Swiss canton of Basel-City has cut the quarantine period to seven days and simplified contact tracing, the city's health department said in a bulletin outlining the new regulations on Friday.

Published: 31 December 2021 19:06 CET
Black and white photo of man looking out of partially opened window.
Very close contacts of infected people will now only need to quarantine for seven days. Photo by Jose Antonio Gallego Vázquez on Unsplash

Rising infection rates driven by the highly contagious Omicron variant mean that many people are in quarantine following contact with someone who tests positive for Covid-19, so the city’s health department has adjusted the rules to reduce the impact on society, in line with recommendations from the Swiss Ministry of Health.

Under the new regulations announced by the in a bulletin, only those people who live in the same household as an infected person or who have “intimate [close physical] contact with an infected person will need to be reported to the cantonal department of health.

These people will have to quarantine and should do a PCR or rapid-antigen test during the quarantine period or at the end of it, at the latest.

But the time they have to quarantine for has also been cut: it’s now seven days from 10 previously.

The new rules will apply from Monday, January 3rd, 2022.

The infected person should still tell other people they have been in contact with that they tested positive, but these non-close contacts do not need to quarantine. According to the bulletin, they are advised to pay attention to hygiene, reduce contact to a minimum and take a test immediately if they get any symptoms.

Even if they don’t get any symptoms, they should still do a test four to seven days after their last contact with the infected person.

Simpler contact tracing
Anyone who is fully vaccinated or has been boosted and received their last jab less than four months ago, does not need to quarantine.You also don’t need to quarantine if you have had and recovered from Covid-19 in the last four months.

These rules do not apply to those who test positive for the virus, of course. As the city’s health department said in the bulletin: “Anyone who tests positive for Covid-19 must continue to stay at home for ten days”.

Contact tracing is also due to be simplified as a result of the surge in case numbers. Text messages sent to infected people with their test result will now also ask them to give the details of people they had contact with.

However, the neighbouring canton of Basel-Country is not quite ready to make any changes.

“We can certainly say something about quarantine regulations in two to three days, but not yet today,” Roman Häring from the cantonal crisis management team told Basler Zeitung.

“At the moment, technical and logistical clarifications are in progress and these also require us to communicate with the neighbouring cantons,” he added.

On Friday, Basel-City’s seven-day incidence rate for 100,000 inhabitants stood at 650, compared with 934 for the whole of Switzerland, the canton’s Department of Health said.

There are currently 1,454 active cases of Covid-19 in the canton and 75 patients in hospital with the virus, including 18 in intensive care.

READ MORE:

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

LEARN ABOUT SWITZERLAND

COMPARE: Maps reveal the areas of Swiss cities with best access to services

A recent landmark study has placed Paris and Milan as being closer to the goal of being a ‘15 minutes city’ than any other cities worldwide - but how do Swiss cities Zurich, Geneva, Basel, Bern and Lausanne compare?

Published: 18 September 2024 09:12 CEST
COMPARE: Maps reveal the areas of Swiss cities with best access to services

The study, published in the journal Nature Cities earlier this week, analysed data from over 10,000 cities globally. It assessed how far residents need to walk or cycle to reach essential services including shops, restaurants, education, exercise and healthcare.

The ’15-minute city’ concept, which gained traction during the COVID-19 pandemic, focuses on enhancing accessibility and sustainability by ensuring that basic services are within a 15-minute walk or bike ride.

The online tool allows you to click on an area of the city to see ho accessible services are by bike or by foot.

READ MORE: Paris and Milan judged closest in the world to becoming ’15-minute cities’

The study also introduced an online tool that visualises the distances residents must travel, using a colour scale from dark red (long distances) to blue (short distances).

“A lot of people already live in a 15-minute city,” study co-author Hygor Piaget Monteiro Melo told AFP.

But it depends on where you look within a city, he said, because of the inequality in access to services between the centre and periphery. This in equality can be seen when examining Switzerland’s major cities.

As the maps below show, while some cities in Switzerland are making significant progress toward the 15-minute city goal, others still have considerable work to do.

BASEL (View on page)

Historic Basel has kept much of the shape and size that it has for centuries, with urban spread distributed almost consistently in each direction. This means that public transportation and community services have kept pace with the growth of the city. 

READ MORE: The nine maps you need to see to understand Switzerland

BERN (View on page)

While much of the ‘federal city’ demonstrates excellent mobility for its citizens, recent expansion into the south-west has not kept pace with the development of basic public services, meaning a long walk for those doing their shopping or visiting a doctor. 

GENEVA (View on page)

Geneva’s status as a diplomatic and scientifc capital is reflected in its excellent public transportation and distribution of shops and basic services. Only areas towards the small hamlet of Carouge in the southeast score over 18 minutes on the accessibility scale. 

LAUSANNE (View on page)

 

Lausanne’s growth in recent decades as part of the life sciences focused ‘Health Valley’ has meant that newly-developed urban area to the northeast and northwest are poorly served by public amenities, necessitating long commutes for those shopping or visiting healthcare. 

ZURICH (View on page)

Zurich is Switzerland’s most expensive city, so it’s no surprise that citizens of the city enjoy excellent access to public transport, amenities and shopping. That said, recent expansion to the east and west has led to bands of relative inaccessibility, particularly concentrated around Wettswil am Albis to the west and Fallanden to the east. 

Readers of The Local who are cyclists in Zurich have criticised the city’s lack of infrastructure for cycling such as bike lanes.

READ ALSO: ‘There are no cycle paths’ – How Zurich could improve safety for cyclists?

Earlier this year The Local also reported how Swiss cantons were criticised for dragging their heels in implementing new bike lanes.

SHOW COMMENTS