The return of a general confinement as early as 22 November, and the choice to impose the vaccine with the entire adult population from February deeply divide the Austrian society.
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Is it innovation or panic? Faced with the fourth wave of Covid-19, the small Austria decided to take again radical and unique decisions in Europe, Friday, 19 November, deciding both to reintroduce a general confinement and, from February 2022, to impose the vaccine with all its adult population. These two decisions are still ever seen at this stage of the epidemic elsewhere in Europe, as was already the “containment of non-vaccinated”, entered into force Monday, November 15 but declared obsolete just four days later.
“We have no choice”, hammered the Conservative Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg by presenting the list of these restrictions negotiated all night with the regional governors and its environmental coalition partners from Innsbruck, Tyrol. “Our intensive care overflows,” he arraid, while 520 patients are currently hospitalized in resuscitation throughout the country, equivalent to that of April, but below the records observed during the second and third waves.
But in a country renowned for his sense of organization, no question of risk of being overwhelmed, even if neighboring States where the situation is even more degraded, such as Slovenia, the Czech Republic or Slovakia, refuse For the moment to follow such a radical way. Germany and Belgium have also decided in recent days to make immunization compulsory, but for caregivers alone. No other country wants to return to a general containment, although many have restricted the use of the sanitary pass only vaccinated and healed, depriving non-vaccinated restaurants or cultural outings.
A reluctant company with vaccination
“Experts say that the steps we have taken will not be enough, but you have to break This fourth wave “, defended the Minister of Health (ecologist) Wolfgang Mückstein, to justify the return of a strict and widespread confinement for a” twenty-day “duration. Compared to previous confines, only schools will remain open, but the authorities still grow parents to keep their children at home. Restaurants, non-essential shops and cultural institutions will fall the curtain on Monday.
The origin of this unexpected return of confinement is first to look behind “the shadow low rate of vaccination”, as defined by Schallenberg. Barely 65.7% of the 8.9 million Austrians received two doses of vaccine, a figure below the European average (67%) and far behind France (75%). Although contaminations have also exploded among vaccinations, which explains the incidence rate exceeding 1,000 cases per 100,000, 90% of intensive care patients are not vaccinated. “We thought for too long that it would be possible to convince people to vaccinate voluntarily, but we must look at the reality in the eyes,” the Chancellor advanced to justify the choice to move to mandatory mode, a taboo in this country where there is no vaccine obligation, even in children.
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