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Switzerland adds Denmark and Australia to quarantine list

Arrivals from Denmark and Australia must complete a mandatory ten-day quarantine, effective immediately.

Published: 29 November 2021 17:14 CET

A stop sign against a dark background. Photo by Ron McClenny on Unsplash

Entry from several countries to Switzerland has been heavily restricted. Photo by Ron McClenny on Unsplash

Just two days after adding five countries to its virus variant of concern list, Switzerland on Monday added another four including Angola, Australia, Denmark and Zambia.

The countries were added due to concerns surrounding the Omicron variant.

Czech Republic, Egypt, Malawi, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom were added on Saturday.

READ MORE: Switzerland imposes quarantine on all arrivals from UK

On Friday, several countries were added to the list including Belgium, Botswana, Eswatini, Hong Kong, Israel, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

The official list is available here.

People arriving from these countries need to present a negative test on arrival and must quarantine for ten days. This is the case even if people are vaccinated or have recovered from the virus.

You also need to do another test between day 4 and day 7, along with informing cantonal authorities.

You also need to fill in the entry form.

READ MORE: Here is the form you need to enter Switzerland

The full list of stipulations is illustrated below.

Image: FOPH

Click here for official government information.

What about banned countries?

Confusion has surrounded the entry requirements over recent days, largely because there are two separate lists of risk countries – to which two separate sets of rules apply.

Switzerland keeps two separate lists relating to entry rules. One, prepared by the Federal Office of Public Health and available here, lists countries with a variant of concern. Entry from countries on that list – which includes the United Kingdom – requires a ten-day quarantine.

The other, prepared by the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) and available here, lists high-risk countries from which entry is not possible, unless you are a Swiss citizen or resident. The United Kingdom is not on this list.

The SEM list is as follows: Botswana, Eswatini, Hong Kong, Israel, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

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Do you really need to own a car living in Denmark?

The case against owning a car in Denmark

Denmark’s Vehicle Registration Tax, together with VAT, more than doubles the cost of buying a petrol or diesel car, making owning a car considerably more expensive in Denmark than in its neighbours Germany and Sweden, although electric cars that cost less than 436,000 kroner are currently tax-exempt.

If you use a car to commute into Copenhagen, Aarhus, or Odense, you will also often find yourself stuck in traffic jams, with the Danish Roads Directorate estimating that Danes lose 365,000 hours to traffic jams every weekday, with the Motorring 3 motorway circling Copenhagen, other major access roads to Copenhagen, the E20 south of Odense, and the E45 on either side of Aarhus the most congested roads in the country.

Parking can also be expensive in Danish cities, costing as much as 500 Danish kroner for 24 hours for non-residents.

How easy is it to get around inside Danish cities without a car?

Denmark is a cycling nation.

According to Visit Denmark, in 2022, 25 percent of all trips under five kilometers across Denmark were done by bike, and 16 percent of all journeys of any kind.

Copenhagen’s aim is for fully half of all trips to work and education to be done on bike by 2025. In 2019, the city was already on 44 percent. It’s a similar situation for smaller cities like Aarhus, Odense, Vejle, Aalborg and Esbjørg.

But even if you can’t or don’t want to cycle, you can still get by in most places without a car, thanks to Denmark’s excellent public transport networks.

Public transport in Denmark has significantly improved only over the last five years, with several new metro lines and light rail systems opening.

With the Cityringen (M3) and Harbour lines (M4) opening in 2019 and 2020, respectively the Copenhagen Metro can now get you to most places in the city.

Denmark scrapped its city tram systems in the 1960s and 1970s, with cities like Aarhus and Odense instead shifting to buses for public transport.

There has recently been a recent revival, however, with Aarhus, Odense and Copenhagen all opening or building new tram/light rail systems.

Odense Letbane opened in 2022, making it easy to get to the out of town shopping area where IKEA and other superstores are based and also to the new hospital. Aarhus Letbane opened in 2017, and takes passengers all the way up the coast around the city, from Odder in the south to Grenaa in the north.

Copenhagen next year plans to open a light-rail system which will travel in a ring around the city’s outer suburbs linking Lundtofte in the north to Ishøj in the southwest.

This will end one of the big drawbacks of the city’s “five finger” transport corridor plan: that while it is quick to travel from the outer suburbs to the centre and vice versa, it is complicated to travel between suburbs which are on a different transport corridors, for example from Albertslund to Herlev, or from Birkerød to Buddinge.

Even before that opens, however, so long as you are only travelling in and out from the centre, it is extremely convenient to get from central Copenhagen to its suburbs and surrounding towns using the S-trains, which run from 5am until half-past midnight on weekdays, and all night on Fridays and Saturdays.

This means you can eat out and party with your friends until the small hours, and still normally get back to Køge, Høje Taastrup, Frederikssund, Farum and Hillerød, the furthest out stops.

Where might you struggle without a car?

Plans for a light railway or tram between Vejle and Billund, or between the so-called Triangle Region between the cities of Vejle, Kolding and Fredericia have so far come to nothing, and even though the local and regional bus and train services can be good, it’s certainly tougher to survive without a car if you don’t live on Zealand, near Aarhus, or perhaps on Funen.

Many people do in fact live without owning a car even in the more far-flung villages on Jutland, and on islands like Bornholm, Lolland and Falster.

They still manage to get everywhere they want to go, but it does require waiting. It’s certainly possible to live without a car, but you might feel limited in where to and when you can travel.

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