ZURICH, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Switzerland will halve its quarantine time to five days to help tackle a wave of coronavirus infections that threatens to hamstring the economy, the government said on Wednesday.
Health authorities had given their blessing on Tuesday for the move, which comes as tens of thousands more people get infected every day due to the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the virus.
Officials worry that the wave could overwhelm the health care system in a country where only two-thirds of the population https://www.covid19.admin.ch/en/overview?time=total has got two jabs and just 30% has had a booster shot.
The government also proposed extending until the end of March curbs on public life it tightened last month while trying to avoid another lockdown and making vaccinations mandatory, as neighbouring Austria is doing.
"The epidemiological situation is critical and remains difficult to assess," the government said in a statement. (Reporting by John Revill and Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi, Editing by Michael Shields)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
