Uncharted Territory
Austria has imposed a lockdown on the country's 1.6 million unvaccinated adults. The aim: to get the vaccination rate up and case numbers down
Servus!
The hour in Austria grows late. On November 15, there were 135,788 active COVID-19 cases in the country, and the seven-day incidence rate per 100,000 people stood at 925.0. The rate of growth is exponential and shows little sign of slowing. With 466 COVID-19 patients currently in intensive care, necessary operations are already being postponed, and in the state of Salzburg, the moment of triage is approaching when a panel of medical professionals will be forced into the role of god, making uncomfortable decisions of life and death.
It is not so much the active case numbers but rather the threat of a collapsing healthcare system that has twisted the Austrian government’s arm into making the country’s coronavirus countermeasures even stricter for the second time in as many weeks. On Saturday, having trailed the idea in the days prior, the government hastily drew up a new ordinance providing the legal basis for another lockdown—albeit this time one that would only affect the unvaccinated. On Sunday morning, chancellor Alexander Schallenberg and health minister Wolfgang Mückstein held a press conference confirming the lockdown; the ordinance was rubber-stamped by the relevant parliamentary committee late Sunday afternoon prior to coming into effect Monday morning.
This new lockdown means that approximately 1.6 million unvaccinated adults are now subject to a stay-at-home order in Austria. They are only permitted to leave their homes under limited circumstances: to go to the grocery store or pharmacy; to go to work if they have to; to deal with a medical emergency; to exercise; or—of course—to get vaccinated. Those under 12 who cannot get vaccinated or older children taking part in testing programs at school are exempt. Police officers now has the right to ask anyone living in Austria to produce proof of their COVID status: a vaccination certificate or certificate of recovery. Those found by police to be in violation of the lockdown face a fine of €1,450.
This lockdown for the unvaccinated is uncharted territory—and not only for Austria. While the world has spent the past 20 months or so lurching from one lockdown to the next, no country has yet tried to lock down only the unvaccinated in order to bring active case numbers down and the vaccination rate up. Without precedent, the Austrian government has no idea whether their latest gambit will work or not. Certainly, the country’s coronavirus experts believe it won’t be enough and that only a full and complete lockdown—with everyone confined to their homes and businesses shuttered—would decisively break the fourth wave.
Politically, however, a fourth national lockdown is currently an absolute no-go. Mückstein had the audacity to float the idea of a nightly curfew for the vaccinated on the news on Sunday and was summarily slapped down by his chancellor on Monday morning. “We want to get the unvaccinated vaccinated rather than lock up the vaccinated,” Schallenberg clarified. To place the vaccinated in another lockdown also carries the risk of undermining the government’s own messaging, namely that the vaccine is the only way out of this pandemic—what Schallenberg called this “vicious cycle” of waves and countermeasures.
The Austrian government’s paramount goal, Schallenberg said, is increasing the vaccination rate, and both the imposition of the partial lockdown for the unvaccinated one week ago and the threat of a full lockdown has encouraged some to finally get the first dose. 68.64 percent of the population has now received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine; 25,695 people got their first dose on Friday, November 12 compared with 6,379 on the Friday four weeks prior. But Austria is now in a race—one it may not be able to win—to get enough people into the vaccination centers and enough needles in arms before this fourth wave, this wave of the unvaccinated, brings Austria’s healthcare system to its knees.
Bis bald!
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