Austria: Total lockdown from Monday and mandatory vaccination of all from February 2022

LAST UPDATE: 12.35

Austria will impose a total, national lockdown from Monday and make vaccination of the population mandatory from 1 February. It thus becomes the first country in the European Union to take such measures to address the resurgence of the Covid epidemic.

“We have to face reality,” Austrian Chancellor Alexander Salenberg told a news conference in Tyrol, following talks with all Austrian regional governors.

“Despite months of persuasion, we have not been able to persuade enough people to be vaccinated,” he said, criticizing the oversaturation of intensive care units in the country’s hospitals.

“Increasing the vaccination rate is the only way out of the vicious circle,” said Alexander Salenberg, noting that the vaccine is the “exit ticket” from the pandemic.

The Austrian Chancellor clarified that the lockdown will last a maximum of 20 days.

In Europe, the pandemic is re-igniting and many countries, such as Sweden, Germany and Greece, have announced tightening restrictions in recent days.

As of last Monday in Austria, the two million unvaccinated people were no longer allowed to leave their homes except for shopping, sports or medical care.

From now on, the lockdown measure applies to the total population of 8.9 million inhabitants, where the vaccination rate is 66%, according to the French Agency (at 63.9% on 17/11, according to the count of Politico), despite the introduction of the vaccination certificate in the spring.

The restrictive measures implemented a few days ago caused an increase in the number of appointments for vaccination measures.

However, the number of cases continues to rise and is at levels unprecedented since the outbreak of the epidemic: yesterday Austria recorded 15,000 cases of the virus in the last 24 hours.