Austria threatens to lockdown the unvaccinated amid infection surge

3 yıl önce

The government of Austria, one of Western Europeâs least vaccinated nations, said it is likely to implement lockdown measures on people who have not been immunized against the coronavirus as infections and hospitalizations surged in recent days.

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Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said Thursday that a lockdown for the unvaccinated is âprobably inevitable,â and that they would face an uncomfortable winter and Christmas, according to Ãsterreichischer Rundfunk, the Austrian public broadcaster.

âI donât see why two-thirds should lose their freedom because one-third is dithering,â Schallenberg said. âFor me, it is clear that there should be no lockdown for the vaccinated out of solidarity for the unvaccinated.â

Such a move is probably only a few days away if the pandemic continues on its current trajectory, according to the governmentâs plan.

Austria on Wednesday logged a seven-day rolling average of about 9,100 new cases, up from just under 5,500 on the prior Wednesday, according to Our World in Data, which tracks publicly available figures. (The seven-day average of covid deaths increased by roughly 60 percent in the same time period.) Its new case count for every million people, is more than double that of both neighboring Germany and Switzerland, according to the tracker.

Austria has already tightened some restrictions. As of Monday, proof of vaccination or recent recovery from covid-19 was required to enter events with 25 or more people, hotels, hairdressers and many dining and entertainment venues, according to the government.

In an effort to encourage more people to get vaccinated, partially immunized people who have tested negative for the virus can still enter these locations until Dec. 5.

Austria has fully vaccinated about 63 percent of its people against the coronavirus, according to Our World in Data, meaning that roughly 3 million people are not fully immunized. Its vaccination rate is higher than that of the United States, though below that of the European Union.

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European authorities have been concerned by a sweeping resurgence of the virus on the continent as winter approaches. Eight out of the ten countries that recorded the most new infections per hundred thousand people during the last week are in Europe, according to Washington Post data.

The World Health Organization said Wednesday that Europe was the only region where both coronavirus cases and deaths were increasing. Hans Kluge, the Europe director for the WHO warned that without action, another 500,000 people could die by February, the Associated Press reported.

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