Austria plans compulsory vaccination against Covid for all | Austria

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Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg announced that Austria will become the first European country to make vaccinations against Covid 19 mandatory, and will enter its third nationwide lockdown for at least 10 days from Monday.

The government said it is preparing the legal basis for a generic vaccine mandate to take effect from February 1, with exemptions for those who cannot receive a shot of a vaccine for medical reasons.

The government said the age at which the vaccination would be required had not yet been determined.

Those who refuse to be vaccinated will likely face administrative fines, which can be converted into a prison sentence if the fine is not refunded.

“For a long time the consensus in this country has been that we don’t want to mandate a vaccine,” Schallenberg said after a meeting with heads of state in the Alpine Republic. “Despite months of persuasion, we haven’t managed to get enough people to get vaccinated.”

Schallenberg, who took over as chancellor last month from his ally Sebastian Kurz, said tightening controls for vaccine passage and testing requirements were starting to make a difference, but “it wasn’t convincing enough.” “We don’t want a fifth wave, we don’t want a sixth or seventh wave.”

Austria is facing its strongest wave of the Covid virus, with authorities on Friday reporting 990 cases per 100,000 people over seven days. And 15,809 new infections were recorded on Friday.

The country has the lowest vaccination rate in Western Europe, with 66% of its population fully vaccinated. Over the past two weeks, the conservative green coalition government has tried to prevent a collapse of the health system by requiring citizens to show proof of vaccination or recovery in restaurants and bars, then declaring a “lockdown on the unvaccinated.”

Austria cases

The national lockdown is expected to last until December 12 but could be reassessed after 10 days if the Covid situation improves. Nurseries and schools will remain open but wearing masks is mandatory in classrooms and pupils can choose to study remotely without a doctor’s note.

Lockdown rules for vaccinated people will expire from December 12, but remain in place for those who have refused to receive the vaccine.

Those who got the second vaccine would in the future be considered fully immunized only for seven months instead of nine months, and could get a booster dose after four months.

Former adviser Kurz, who resigned amid a corruption investigation in mid-October, assured the public in July that “the pandemic is now over for everyone who is vaccinated.”

“Nobody wants a lockdown, it’s a primitive tool,” Austrian Health Minister Wolfgang Mochstein said on Friday. “But it is the most effective tool we have.”

In particular, the planned public vaccine mandate has drawn heavy criticism from opposition seats in Parliament. “From this day on, Austria has become a dictatorship,” said Herbert Kekel of the far-right Freedom Party, which has called for unproven alternative treatments against coronavirus infections, such as the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin.

While countries including Italy and France have made vaccination against Covid-19 mandatory for health workers, Austria will be the first country in Europe to implement such a requirement for society as a whole. Outside the continent, Indonesia, Micronesia and Turkmenistan have an adult vaccine mandate.

Unlike other federal countries such as Germany, Austria has a central national vaccination database, which the government can check against those registered as living in the country to determine who has not yet received a shot.

Compulsory vaccination is not unprecedented in Austria. In 1948, the post-war government made smallpox vaccination mandatory by law. In 1980, the World Health Organization declared smallpox to be the first disease to be defeated through vaccination.

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