Federal Act
on Controlling Communicable Human Diseases
(Epidemics Act, EpidA)

¹ The FOPH shall op­er­ate an in­form­a­tion sys­tem for stor­ing data re­lat­ing to per­sons who are ill, sus­pec­ted of be­ing ill, in­fec­ted or sus­pec­ted of be­ing in­fec­ted or who are spread­ing patho­gens.

² The in­form­a­tion sys­tem shall con­tain the fol­low­ing data:

a.

iden­ti­fic­a­tion data that en­able a per­son to be uniquely iden­ti­fied and to be con­tac­ted;

b.

de­tails of travel routes, places of stay and con­tacts with per­sons, an­im­als and ob­jects;

c

res­ults of med­ic­al tests;

d.

de­tails of meas­ures to pre­vent and con­trol a com­mu­nic­able dis­ease.

³ The in­form­a­tion sys­tem shall be used to:

a.

identi­fy and no­ti­fy per­sons who are ill, sus­pec­ted of be­ing ill, in­fec­ted or sus­pec­ted of be­ing in­fec­ted or who are spread­ing patho­gens;

b.

or­gan­ise meas­ures in re­la­tion to in­di­vidu­al per­sons in ac­cord­ance with Art­icles 33–38.

⁴ It shall also as­sist with the uni­form pro­cessing of data by the re­spons­ible au­thor­it­ies, the pro­duc­tion of stat­ist­ics and checks on im­ple­ment­a­tion.

⁵ The FOPH is re­spons­ible for the se­cur­ity of the in­form­a­tion sys­tem and the leg­al­ity of the pro­cessing of per­son­al data. The can­tons shall take ap­pro­pri­ate or­gan­isa­tion­al and tech­nic­al meas­ures to se­cure per­son­al data in their area of re­spons­ib­il­ity.

⁶ The FOPH shall check wheth­er the data it re­ceives are ac­cur­ate. It shall cor­rect in­ac­cur­ate data and des­troy un­ne­ces­sary data and no­ti­fy the data pro­viders con­cerned.

⁷ The in­form­a­tion sys­tem shall be made avail­able on­line to the FOPH, the can­ton­al bod­ies re­spons­ible for im­ple­ment­ing this Act and the Co­ordin­ated Med­ic­al Ser­vices for tasks with­in their area of re­spons­ib­il­ity.

⁸ The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall stip­u­late the re­quire­ments for safe­guard­ing and de­let­ing data and reg­u­late the ac­cess rights.

⁹ The right to re­ceive in­form­a­tion on the data in the in­form­a­tion sys­tem and the right to have the data cor­rec­ted are gov­erned by Art­icles 5 and 8 of the Fed­er­al Act of 19 June 1992⁸ on Data Pro­tec­tion. Re­quests for in­form­a­tion on per­son­al data and for cor­rec­tions to be made to the data must be sent to the FOPH.