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Swiss voters supported through a referendum the law that allows the government to impose the so-called “Covid passport”, a measure that requires the presentation of a vaccination certificate or a recent test for the virus with negative results, to access public places. At least 62% of the votes cast on November 28 support the regulation.
Switzerland gives a boost to the health passport. The country becomes the first in the world to approve at the polls the measure aimed at mitigating the spread of Covid-19 and its worrying new strains.
62% of citizens voted in favor of the law that stipulates the use of the “Covid passport”, the document that guarantees that a person is fully vaccinated against the virus or has a recent diagnostic test with negative results.
Voters backed the measure despite the aggressive campaign against the right-wing populist UDC party, one of the nation’s leading political formations.
Only by presenting the health passport, people will be able to access certain public services or places. Among them, eating inside a restaurant, going to the cinema, a church, a show, or attending a sporting event with a capacity of more than 1,000 people.
The law also provides financial aid for the sectors most economically affected by the pandemic. If the consultation had been rejected in the referendum, the Government would have been legally prevented from renewing the distribution of those funds, which expire in the first quarter of 2022.
Oppositions against vaccines and health passports
The detractors of the measure pointed out that the imposition of the requirement represents discrimination against unvaccinated people and that it violates their freedoms.
Several Swiss cities were the scene in recent weeks of protests over the imposition of the health passport, which, unlike other European countries, is not necessary to take public transport or to go to the workplace.
Although this country, like other developed nations, has wide access to antidotes to the virus, it has faced the refusal of thousands of people to be immunized.
Scientists point out that those inoculated are more protected from developing the disease in a serious way, unlike those who are not vaccinated.
In fact, official figures in European nations such as Germany and the Netherlands indicate that the vast majority of hospitalizations and new deaths have occurred in citizens who were not vaccinated.
Until now, the Swiss government had largely resisted the stricter restrictions, even as cases approach record levels, but on Friday, November 26 and Saturday, it imposed travel bans amid the spread of the new South African variant known as ‘Ómicron’.
But, all political parties, except the extreme right, asked citizens to support the Covid-19 Law, considering it the only means for the population to maintain a daily life closer to the normality that was lived before the pandemic.
With Reuters and EFE
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