(No) isolation requirements for Austria or Switzerland, and Italy, Germany and France?

Carla, I do not have a answer for you but following your post. Sounds like you are going on My Way Alpine tour.. we are too in August. I hope you will post and let us know how you like the tour and some tips on what you did..
Have a wonderful trip and looking forward to reading your follow up post.
Sue

Hi Sue! Yes, I’m on the mid-July My Way Alpine Europe tour, and I’ll be glad to let you know how I find the tour & hopefully have tips to offer. My son and I are going for music concerts (Salzburg), cuisine (everywhere), and hiking in the Italian, Swiss and French Alps. This has been the craziest trip for planning… it’s like whack-a-mole, but with endless Covid-related issues to deal with. The Rick Steves office today confirmed that Austria no longer has an enforced isolation period. This is big for our tour, because it’s where we take our required pre-tour test. While it’s bad to catch Covid and get kicked off the tour, it can be drastically easier or harder depending on where it happens.

Good luck to both of us! 😌

Carla, We are super excited. We have been planning since pre-COVID. We are both daily walkers so during COVID we thought this will be over soon keep up our walking so we will be ready. During 2020 with so much closed andI was off 8 weeks and my husband retired we went walking daily. We were up to 8 miles daily. We were so disappointed when we finally accepted that it wasnot happening in 2020 or 2021. We are now back to adding more hills.. we are fortunate to have a beautiful state park across the street.
We have booked a dinner concert at the fortress in Salzburg. We been to Switzerland on two other tours and it is our favorite country. Hiking/ walking the alps is why we chose this tour.
Our only other plans so far is one extra day in Chamonix then going to Annecy for four days.

I have already packed several times in my head.. I am determined to pack light.. by the end of any of our 4 previous tours I want to throw away my suitcase.. and we each do a 21 inch suitcase..
we just had our second booster.. we headed off so we would be covered longer..

Enjoy your trip. 🧳 ✈️🚶🏻‍♀️🚶🏻‍♀️

In Germany, it depends on which Bundesland you are in, because these rules are regulated at that level.

In general, though, I think most places have a mandatory 5 day isolation after a positive test, which however is to be carried out in your own residence (I am not sure what you mean by "enforced", but this is the law). In my Bundesland, this does not require a second test at the end of the 5 days, as long as you have been symptom-free for two days. You would need to look up the rules for the places you will be if you want precise information.

For sure in Austria if you test positive you must quarantine for a minimum of 5 days and then you can only come out of quarantine with a negative test taken after being 48 hours symptom free where your values are 30 or higher on the lab result. When I had COVID recently, I was only out of quarantine after 9 days as my daily tests continued to come back positive.

PS - I know more people in Vienna right now with COVID then I have at any point during the pandemic.

You definitely need to isolate in France and Italy too when you test positive. The time depends on the specific country.

Italy
If within the last 120 days you have either completed a full course of vaccination or received a booster, you must self-isolate for at least 7 days. If not, you must self-isolate for at least 10 days.
In order to be released from self-isolation, you must produce a negative test and you will also need to have been symptom-free for at least 3 days.

France
If you test positive for COVID-19 in France and you’re fully vaccinated (including a booster) or if you’ve had COVID-19 in the last 4 months, you must self-isolate for 7 days from the day on which you first develop symptoms, or 7 days from the date of the positive test result. Self-isolation can be reduced to 5 days if you take a negative PCR or antigen test (supervised, not self-administered) on day 5 and you have not displayed any symptoms over the previous 48 hours.

Azra, Emily, and Dutch Traveler,
thank you for your input!

Emily - I will contact the Rick Steves office today. Why in the world did they tell me there is no enforced isolation period if testing positive for Covid in Austria??? Everyone on my upcoming tour is required to take a pre-tour Covid test in Salzburg. After processing through airports & flying internationally. It’s dismaying to hear that you know more Covid positive people in Vienna than ever before. I live in Washington state (where the Rick Steves office is located), and I know more Covid positive people right now than ever before too.

Here’s the official source - https://www.austria.info/en/service-and-facts/coronavirus-information/sick-during-holiday

I have to think that someone misunderstood your question because how can anyone think that Austria would allow a person with COVID to just roam around as normal. The tests here all require registration with public health officials so that your results are tracked. If you violate quarantine, you will be punished. Health officials visit homes of people in quarantine.

First hand experience. Returned from France yesterday. Husband and I both with 2 boosters but we had never had Covid. Had “allergic” symptoms so minimal we didn’t think about it then 36 hours later, still only stuffy nose, we did self test and were both positive 😱. Had to isolate 5 days and arrange train back to Paris. We never had more than congestion no headache no fever no sore throat. Asymptomatic by day 3. We stayed in same hotel for additional nights then relocated to airport hotel wearing n95 masks the entire time. We did go to pharmacy. Only thing hotel indicated was that we should not go in restaurant. They were very helpful. Our guide took care of talking to hotel and finding out we could stay in same room. We were glad we had travel experience and hotel Wi-Fi. We did our own research (lots of hours in 12x12 hotel room) for train tickets and arrangements to get food (mostly from restaurant attached to hotel) and UberEats. Rick Steves notified us of refund by second day after we sent official lab test. It could have been worse. We did not require any medical care. Our insurance did not cover our hotels and transportation after we left tour. I thought we were less of a threat to those around us than the 95% of people not wearing masks. Lots of ugly coughing and sneezing and no masks. We wore our masks indoors, on metro and busy areas. So who knows. We were the only ones on our tour who were positive. I think most of the others had Covid at some point before trip. I guess we had been too careful for 2.3 years. The first days of tour were EXCELLENT. The best tour ever. We loved it. There were tears shed for the days we missed

We just returned from a trip where we got Covid in Austria. They take it very seriously. We were in a small town for a wedding. They sent a medic there to do a PCR test for free and gave us a QR code and website. Unlike the states, day 0 of your isolation is the date of the PCR test not symptoms or antigen test. We got permission to move by private car to Salzburg since all the hotels in our town were full and we couldn’t isolate there. They did check on us by phone. They sent a physical letter to the hotel. You were required to isolate through day 5. At that point if you confirmed via email that you had been symptom free you could leave isolation wearing a mask, even outside, and avoiding any place where people did not mask (restaurants, etc.). You were allowed to take a train, which we promptly did to meet up with our family in Switzerland. We are hoping our insurance (Allianz) will pay for our trip interruption isolation as promised. It was pretty depressing to miss the wedding and first part of the trip. We are fully vaxxed and boosted and have been masked and careful. Everyone in Europe was coughing and sneezing and few were masked. We were fortunate they dropped the test requirement to come home because I was still testing positive even though my symptoms had been gone for over 10 days and were very mild. My husband tested negative early on but is still with a cough,

sktse - that does sound like a nightmare. You say all the hotels in town were full, so they gave you special permission to move by private car. What if you didn’t have a private car? And, how did you and your husband get meals during the 5 day isolation?

We hired a car with driver, double masked and sat in the far back. Didn’t have much other choice. Food is an issue, they don’t do room service or take out much in Austria, our first hotel was lovely and brought food to our room on a tray from the free buffet and dinner menu. In Salzburg our family stocked us up with some groceries before they moved on, the hotel had a fridge and tea kettle, so we lived on yogurt, breads, fruit, instant noodles, etc. We tried to do the food delivery service, but our credit card wouldn’t work online… not sure why. Definitely make sure to bring plenty of OTC meds in case, we read that on here and had a lot of meds available. My symptoms were a slight runny nose and nausea (if my husband didn’t have it I probably would thought it was jetlag and not tested), so Dramamine really helped.

I was told by a "fairly reliable source" that Switzerland does not require isolation if you test positive. They say it would be polite if you'd wear a mask while you're out and about! I had a hard time believing that but, since I'm going in August, I was glad to hear it.

Janet, it doesn’t get more reliable than the official Swiss Gov. website. 😊

https://www.bag.admin.ch/bag/en/home/krankheiten/ausbrueche-epidemien-pandemien/aktuelle-ausbrueche-epidemien/novel-cov/so-schuetzen-wir-uns.html#883350429