Coro­n­avirus: Swiss gov­ern­ment de­clares “ex­tra­or­di­nary sit­u­a­tion”

In view of the ac­cel­er­ated spread of the coro­n­avirus, the Fed­eral Coun­cil took the de­ci­sion, on 16 March 2020, to in­tro­duce more strin­gent mea­sures to pro­tect the pub­lic. It has de­clared that an ‘ex­tra­or­di­nary sit­u­a­tion’ now ex­ists in Switzer­land in terms of the Epi­demics Act. The main goal of the mea­sures is to slow down the in­fec­tion rate for the med­ical sys­tem to cope with the ris­ing se­vere COVID-19 cases and to main­tain a min­i­mum level of health ser­vice for the en­tire pop­u­la­tion. To this end, the Swiss gov­ern­ment has also mo­bilised up to 8000 mem­bers of the armed forces to as­sist with health­care, lo­gis­tics and se­cu­rity.

As of 17 March, all pub­lic and pri­vate events are pro­hib­ited in Switzer­land. All shops, mar­kets, restau­rants, bars and en­ter­tain­ment and leisure fa­cil­i­ties, such as mu­se­ums, li­braries, cin­e­mas, con­cert halls and the­atres, sports cen­tres, swim­ming pools and ski areas are closed. Also af­fected are busi­nesses at which the rec­om­mended dis­tance of 2 m. can­not be main­tained, such as hair­dressers and cos­met­ics stu­dios.

No short­age of food, med­i­c­i­nal prod­ucts and es­sen­tial every­day items

The Swiss gov­ern­ment as­sured that there are enough stocks to pro­vide the en­tire pop­u­la­tion with food­stuffs, med­i­c­i­nal prod­ucts and es­sen­tial every­day items over a long pe­riod. Food stores, take­away busi­nesses, com­pany can­teens, food home de­liv­ery ser­vices and phar­ma­cies re­main open, as will petrol sta­tions, rail­way sta­tions, banks, post of­fices, ho­tels, pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tions and so­cial in­sti­tu­tions. Main­te­nance fa­cil­i­ties for means of trans­port may re­main open. How­ever, all these es­tab­lish­ments must fol­low the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Fed­eral Of­fice of Pub­lic Health on hy­giene and keep­ing your dis­tance. Hos­pi­tals, clin­ics and med­ical prac­tices will re­main open, but must forego non-ur­gent med­ical pro­ce­dures and treat­ments. Peo­ple at es­pe­cially high risk should work from home. If that is not pos­si­ble, they are to be placed on leave by their em­ploy­ers but will con­tinue to re­ceive their pay.

In­fra­struc­tures are also run­ning smoothly, al­though pub­lic trans­porta­tion has been re­duced and Swiss air­line is only op­er­at­ing at 20% of its usual ca­pac­ity. Lufthansa Group has an­nounced that in­ter­na­tional flights will be lim­ited to the air­ports of Frank­furt and Zurich (op­er­ated by Swiss).

Schools closed until 19 April

All ed­u­ca­tion fa­cil­i­ties are closed as well. How­ever, the can­tons are re­quired to en­sure that child­care is pro­vided for chil­dren who can­not be looked after pri­vately. Child day-care fa­cil­i­ties may only be closed if other suit­able arrange­ments exist. This mea­sure will apply for the time being until 19 April. School clo­sures will also now apply until this date.

Bor­der checks

In ad­di­tion, checks at the bor­ders with Ger­many, Aus­tria and France have been in­tro­duced and entry bans im­posed, al­beit with ex­cep­tions. Al­ready since Fri­day 13 March, Schen­gen bor­der con­trols on per­sons en­ter­ing from Italy are ap­plied. Entry to Switzer­land from its four large neigh­bours is now only pos­si­ble for Swiss cit­i­zens, per­sons hold­ing a res­i­dence per­mit for Switzer­land and per­sons who must enter Switzer­land for work-re­lated rea­sons. Tran­sit and goods traf­fic will con­tinue to be al­lowed as well. Lastly, peo­ple will also be able to enter Switzer­land in emer­gency sit­u­a­tions. These mea­sures are in­tended to pro­tect the Swiss pop­u­la­tion and main­tain ca­pac­i­ties in the Swiss health ser­vice. In order to im­ple­ment these mea­sures in a tar­geted man­ner, smaller bor­der cross­ings around the coun­try have been closed and cross-bor­der traf­fic chan­nelled through larger cross­ings. A list of these cross­ings will be pub­lished by the Fed­eral Cus­toms Ad­min­is­tra­tion. The ef­fect of the rein­tro­duc­tion of bor­der checks is ev­i­dent by long ques of cross bor­der work­ers en­ter­ing Switzer­land in the morn­ing with wait­ing pe­ri­ods up to one hour. 320’000 EU-cit­i­zens nor­mally cross the Swiss bor­der every day for work pur­poses. As many com­pa­nies are ap­ply­ing home of­fice where pos­si­ble, cross bor­der traf­fic has been re­duced by 25% al­ready.

Ways to limit the neg­a­tive im­pact on busi­ness

Swiss busi­ness is sup­port­ing the mea­sures put in place by the Swiss gov­ern­ment. They are nec­es­sary to avoid a col­lapse of the na­tional health sys­tem by too many crit­i­cally ill Corona pa­tients. How­ever, the pop­u­la­tion and busi­ness are heav­ily hit by the mea­sures.

economiesu­isse wel­comes that the fed­eral gov­ern­ment wants to ex­tend the in­stru­ment of com­pen­sa­tion for short time work for com­pa­nies in dif­fi­cul­ties. Ad­di­tion­ally, economiesu­isse urges the Fed­eral Coun­cil to rapidly ac­ti­vate the loan guar­an­tee co­op­er­a­tives, which are sup­ported by the fed­eral gov­ern­ment and fa­cil­i­tate SMEs ac­cess to bank cred­its be­cause these or­gan­i­sa­tions can pro­vide the banks with guar­an­tees. These co­op­er­a­tives guar­an­tee loans of up to 1 mil­lion CHF. The Con­fed­er­a­tion in­sures up to 65% of the as­so­ci­ated risk of loss. The au­thor­i­ties also pay a pro­por­tion of their ad­min­is­tra­tive costs. This scheme shall be made avail­able to SMEs who are par­tic­u­larly hit by the ef­fects of the Corona virus. In ad­di­tion to this, com­pa­nies should be given the pos­si­bil­ity to delay pay­ments to the au­thor­i­ties in order to avoid bank­ruptcy of oth­er­wise sol­vent en­ter­prises. 

For busi­ness it is es­sen­tial that the sup­ply from abroad of raw ma­te­ri­als, whole­sale prod­ucts and final goods is guar­an­teed. Goods trans­ports must con­tinue to cross the bor­ders with­out fur­ther hin­der­ance. economiesu­isse wel­comes the de­ci­sion of the Swiss gov­ern­ment not to fore­see any re­stric­tions in this area and to co­or­di­nate cross bor­der ex­change of goods closely with the EU. The de­cided bor­der checks for per­sons and clo­sures of smaller bor­der cross­ings must not lead to de­lays in the han­dling of goods.

Com­pa­nies with­out con­tact to the pub­lic shall be able to con­tinue to op­er­ate as long as the hy­giene and safety pro­ce­dures are being re­spected. Thus. the neg­a­tive im­pact on the econ­omy as a whole can be lim­ited to a min­i­mum.