Lockdown to be imposed in Austria?

Austria is expected to impose a lockdown on the unvaccinated people amid a sudden increase in COVID-19 cases.

On Friday, Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg told a press conference that his government wanted to give the "green light" to impose the COVID restrictions by Sunday. However, the lawmakers will be meeting on the weekend to discuss further the decision.

Schulenburg already warned that if the COVID-19 cases continue to rise, the unvaccinated people would be facing new lockdown restrictions. Such a strategy would place unvaccinated people under lockdown once coronavirus patients occupy 30% of ICU beds in hospitals.

According to Reuters, Covid patients currently take up 20% of the ICU beds in Austria. The country saw 67,148 new cases in the past seven days which is also the highest that Austria has ever seen.

Data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control shows that around 65% of Austria’s population is fully vaccinated. That gives Austria the second-lowest vaccination rate in Western Europe after Liechtenstein.

Official government data, meanwhile, shows that 760 in 100,000 people in Austria were infected with Covid over the last week. The least-vaccinated province of Upper Austria, where 1,193 in 100,000 people tested positive over the last week, has already announced plans to impose a lockdown on unvaccinated people from Monday. The province of Innsbruck is also reportedly weighing a lockdown, regardless of the plans nationally.

Unvaccinated people will be banned from visiting non-essential public places like restaurants and movie theaters, and will not be permitted to use services that require close contacts, such as beauty salons and barbers.

Austria has faced issues with vaccine resistance in its push to roll out the Covid immunization. In September, the newly formed Menschen-Freiheit-Grundrechte (People-Freedom-Rights) party – a group of Covid vaccine skeptics – won three seats in the Upper Austrian regional parliament.

Meanwhile, Austria’s third-biggest political party, the right-wing Freedom Party, has openly condemned the Covid vaccine.

Writer - Tanishq Aggarwal

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