This general confinement, announced Friday by the Chancellor, Alexander Schallenberg, is a first in Europe since the spring. The decision is only five days after the entry into force of the non-vaccinated containment, which had been very criticized.
Le Monde
The measure to stem the considerable number of new cases of contamination in Austria marks its most radical step. Alexander Schallenberg, the Austrian Chancellor, announced, on Friday, November 19, the entry into force on Monday a general confinement of the whole country for twenty days. The Chancellor also reported that a vaccine obligation would be established from the following 1 February 2022.
After deciding to confine unvaccinated people and then announced the confinement of two regions, this general confinement has been a first in Europe since the spring. “The dynamics of contamination is not tenable,” explained Thursday Wilfried Haslauer, Governor (ÖVP, Österreichische Volksparti, Popular Party, Curator Chrétien) from the Land of Salzburg, where the seven-day incidence rate exceeded 1,700 cases for 100,000 inhabitants.
Nearly 66% of the fully vaccinated population
Under the pressure of the measurements and the epidemic, the number of vaccinated has increased slightly in recent days, with 65.6% of the entire population received two doses, which is below average European (67%) and far from countries like Spain (79%) or France (75%). Mr. Schallenberg had qualified this rate of “shamefully low” when he had reported the confinement project for unvaccinated persons.
But the current epidemic leap is not only explained by the low vaccine coverage. About 40% of the symptomatic people positive to the coronavirus during the last four weeks had received two doses of vaccine. Intensive care beds, however, remain almost entirely occupied by non-vaccinated. With nearly 500 patients in intensive care on all its territory, Austria is still far from the situation we observed in neighboring countries, all struck hard by this fourth wave.