The Austrian Government values confine all unvaccinated people nationally, after the Upper Austria region imposed movement restrictions on the unimmunized from Monday in an attempt to control the high level of coronavirus infections.
“The situation is dramatic”, has justified the measure today Thomas Stelzer, the governor of that federal state, one of the nine that make up Austria and which has a population of 1.5 million.
With only 17% of Austria’s total population, that region today accounted for 22% of all newly infected registered in the last 24 hours, and it is also the region with the lowest rate of immunized population.
Austria has accounted for 11,975 new COVID-19 infections, a new high since the pandemic began and almost ten times more than a month ago. The epidemiological plan of the Austrian Government foresees that when 600 intensive care beds, 30% of the total, are occupied by patients with this disease, they apply “movement restrictions” to those who are not vaccinated or have not had the disease.
As of yesterday there was 420 patients of COVID admitted to ICU, 200 more than a week ago. The Federal Chancellor, Alexander Schallenberg, has warned that “It is a few days away from having to impose a confinement on the unvaccinated”, a measure that, he has asserted, is “neither wanted nor desired”.
Since last Monday, the prohibition of access to gastronomy establishments, to beauty centers and to events with more than 25 people to the unvaccinated, a restriction that the Chancellor has warned could be applied throughout the winter. For this reason, he appealed to individual responsibility for people to go to be vaccinated and hoped that this “threatening scenario” would take effect.
“I do not see (well) that two thirds lose freedom because one third is doubting,” he remarked, before explaining that it is a matter of “solidarity”, that confining the vaccinated “would destroy the incentive to get vaccinated” and it is not well seen either “from a democratic point of view”, where “the majority would be taken hostage by the minority”, has collected the newspaper ‘Die Presse’.
Austria is, with 65%, one of the Western European countries with less percentage of fully immunized population against the coronavirus. The Austrian authorities imposed movement restrictions during the first wave of the pandemic, which limited them to performing essential tasks such as going to work, shopping or helping others.
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