Austria will implement the European Union’s strictest mandate on the Covid-19 vaccine requirement this week, making immunization mandatory for anyone over the age of 18. While Italy, Greece and other EU countries have required the vaccine for certain groups, such as the elderly, health professionals and workers, Austria is the first in the bloc to implement measures for such broad groups.
The political consensus around the Austrian plan has shown signs of unraveling in recent weeks, as experts await data to see whether available vaccines would be as effective against the highly transmissible new Ômicron variant.
Recent studies, including a report published Tuesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have confirmed that vaccines help prevent serious illness, hospitalization and death, while booster shots increase those protections.
Austria’s government said that while the mandate is a difficult step, it is necessary to fight serious diseases and get out of the pandemic. “We know that vaccination is the only way out of this and back to a normal life,” Austrian Federal Minister Karoline Edtstadler recently told the BBC.
A return to normal life – or something close to it – is beginning across Europe. From reopening restaurants and nightlife to relaxing quarantine measures and removing mask requirements, some of the biggest economies on the bloc are relaxing their Covid-19 rules despite record numbers of cases, fueled in large part by the spread of Omicron. . Officials say they can do so because the variant is causing less serious illness and hospitalizations among their highly vaccinated populations.
Britain’s Health Secretary Sajid Javid on Monday scrapped an order that required all frontline medical workers in England to be vaccinated, saying that while vaccination remains “our best line of defence” , it is no longer “proportionate” to demand it. The U-turn followed England’s decision to drop its so-called “Plan B” restrictions, introduced to combat the Ômicron variant, as plateau cases.
Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands are suspending their remaining Covid-19 rules despite the increase in cases – Denmark has the second highest infection rate, or seven-day average of new infections, of any nation in the world, according to Our World in Data.
Officials in the countries said recent spikes have not translated into an increase in hospitalizations, as Norway’s Prime Minister Gahr Stoere noted: “We are well protected by vaccines.” France said on Wednesday it would begin to roll back restrictions as the situation appears to stabilise.
United States
The picture looks very different in the United States, where mounting hospitalizations and deaths have dashed hopes that Omicron would be kinder to the country than previous waves. Unlike Western Europe, where leaders are starting to turn the page on the pandemic, the Covid death rate in the United States is rising, according to the latest estimates from Our World in Data.
Experts blame the country’s failure to vaccinate as many people as other wealthy nations. The US now ranks fourth globally in Covid-19 deaths per capita, according to Johns Hopkins University. The only major European country to surpass the US death toll is Poland.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that it is starting to see a worrying increase in deaths in most regions of the world, and that it is premature for any country to give up attempts to stop transmission.
“We are concerned that a narrative has taken hold in some countries that, because of vaccines, and because of the high transmissibility and lower severity of Ômicron, prevention of transmission is no longer possible and is no longer necessary. Nothing could be further from the truth,” she said.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters on Tuesday.
“More transmission means more deaths. We are not asking any country to return to the so-called lockdown. But we are asking all countries to protect their people using all available tools, not just vaccines. It is premature for any country to also surrender or declare victory,” she added.
Source: CNN Brasil
