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

In this Act:

a.

com­mu­nic­able dis­ease means an ill­ness that may be trans­mit­ted to hu­man be­ings by patho­gens or their tox­ic products;

b.

ob­ser­va­tions means clin­ic­al find­ings (e.g. sus­pec­ted dia­gnoses, con­firmed dia­gnoses, deaths), labor­at­ory ana­lys­is find­ings (e.g. test res­ults, dir­ect and in­dir­ect evid­ence of patho­gens, typi­fic­a­tions, res­ist­ance tests), epi­demi­olo­gic­al find­ings (e.g. key fig­ures on health­care-as­so­ci­ated in­fec­tions) and in­cid­ents (e.g. sus­pi­cious sub­stances, ob­jects) con­nec­ted with com­mu­nic­able dis­eases;

c.

patho­gens means nat­ur­al and ge­net­ic­ally mod­i­fied or­gan­isms (e.g. vir­uses, bac­teria, fungi, pro­to­zoa and oth­er para­sites), sub­stances (e.g. pri­ons, tox­ins) and ge­net­ic ma­ter­i­al that can cause or ag­grav­ate a com­mu­nic­able dis­ease;

d.

hand­ling patho­gens means any activ­ity in­volving patho­gens, in par­tic­u­lar their man­u­fac­ture, re­pro­duc­tion, re­lease, mar­ket­ing, im­port, ex­port, trans­it, re­ten­tion, use, stor­age, dis­pos­al or trans­port.