Austria to Impose Lockdown on Millions of Unvaccinated People

Covid patients currently take up 20% of ICU beds in Austria, according to Reuters, and that level is rising fast.

The country saw 67,148 new cases of Covid-19 over the past seven days — a new record weekly high, Johns Hopkins University data shows.

“We have just days until we have to introduce a lockdown for unvaccinated people,” Schallenberg told a press conference on Thursday.

The chancellor also said Thursday it was “probably inevitable” that Austria would have to impose a lockdown for those who were not vaccinated, adding that there was an “uncomfortable” winter and Christmas ahead for the unvaccinated, local media outlets reported.

Schallenberg went on to dub Austria’s vaccination rate as “shamefully low,” according to Reuters.

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 contact, such as beauty salons and barbers.