Austria announces Europe’s first nationwide vaccine mandate and reimposes lockdown as Covid-19 soars

CNN

By Nadine Schmidt, CNN

Austria is going back into a national lockdown and plans to become the first country in Europe to make Covid-19 vaccinations mandatory for all eligible people as the nation’s coronavirus crisis deepens, Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg announced Friday.

Schallenberg said his government would look to impose the national vaccine requirement from February 1. Around 65% of Austria’s population is fully vaccinated against Covid-19, one of the lower rates in the European Union, where cases are surging.

The national lockdown — the first in Europe this fall — starts Monday and will last for 10 days minimum, and could be extended for a further 10 days, Schallenberg told reporters at a news conference in Vienna.

The move comes only days after Austria took the step, unprecedented in Europe, of imposing lockdown measures for all those age 12 and older who are not fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

Under those measures, which came into force on November 15, the unvaccinated were ordered to stay at home except for a few limited reasons, with the rules policed by officers carrying out spot checks on those who were out and about.

Austrian Health Minister Wolfgang Mückstein said Friday that schools and kindergartens would remain open during the upcoming national lockdown.

But Schallenberg said it was possible for parents to take their children out of school if they so wished. “This is always a challenge, for every family,” he said. During the first Austrian lockdown, schools and kindergartens were closed.

Mückstein also urged the wearing of FFP2 masks in all enclosed spaces and said employees could request the option of working from home where possible.

Once the national lockdown is lifted, lockdown measures will remain in place for unvaccinated Austrians, Mückstein said, adding that everything needed to be done to avoid a “fifth wave.”

Neigboring Germany also announced plans Thursday to introduce targeted Covid-19 restrictions on the unvaccinated to tackle record levels of infections amid its fourth wave of the pandemic.

Outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel described the country’s Covid-19 situation as ”dramatic” and ”very worrying” at a news conference Thursday, following a meeting with Germany’s 16 federal state leaders on stricter Covid-19 measures.

Merkel warned that intensive care unit beds were filling up much too quickly, adding it’s ”high time to take action.”

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