Is it innovation or panic? Faced with the fourth wave of Covid-19, Austria has, in any case, decided to once again take radical and unique decisions in Europe, Friday, November 19, by deciding both to reintroduce general containment on Monday and, from February 2022, to impose the vaccine on its entire adult population. These two decisions are unheard of at this stage of the epidemic elsewhere in Europe, as was already the “containment of the unvaccinated”, which entered into force on Monday, November 15, but declared obsolete just four days later. .
“We have no other choice”, hammered the conservative chancellor, Alexander Schallenberg, presenting the list of these restrictions, negotiated overnight with regional governors and his green coalition partners from Innsbruck, in Tyrol. “Our intensive care is overflowing”, he pleaded, while 520 patients are currently hospitalized in intensive care throughout the country, a level equivalent to that of April, but lower than the records observed during the second and third waves.
But in a country known for its sense of organization, there is no question of risking being overwhelmed, even if neighboring states in which the situation is even more degraded, such as Slovenia, the Czech Republic or Slovakia, refuse to do so. moment to follow such a radical path. Germany and Belgium have, of course, also decided in the last few days to make vaccination compulsory, but only for caregivers. No other country wants to return to general confinement for the moment, even if several have restricted the use of the health pass to only vaccinated and cured, depriving the unvaccinated of restaurants or cultural outings.
A society reluctant to vaccination
“Experts say that the measures we have taken are not going to be enough, but we must break this fourth wave”, defended the Minister of Health (ecologist) Wolfgang Mückstein, to justify the return of a strict and generalized confinement for a period of “Twenty days”. Compared to previous lockdowns, only schools will remain open, but the authorities are still pushing parents to keep their children at home. Restaurants, non-essential shops and cultural institutions will lower the curtain on Monday.
The origin of this unexpected return of confinement is first to be found behind “The shamefully low rate of vaccination”, as defined by Schallenberg. Barely 65.7% of the 8.9 million Austrians received two doses of the vaccine, a figure lower than the European average (67%) and far behind that of France (75%). Even if contaminations have also exploded among vaccinated people, which explains the incidence rate exceeding 1,000 cases per 100,000, 90% of patients in intensive care are not vaccinated. “We believed for too long that it would be possible to convince people to be vaccinated voluntarily, but we have to face reality”, argued the Chancellor to justify the choice to switch to compulsory mode, a taboo in this country where there is no vaccination obligation, even in children.
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