THE NEW YORK TIMES: Austria will go into a nationwide lockdown on Monday and impose a coronavirus vaccination mandate in February, Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said on Friday. It is the first such lockdown in a European nation since the spring, and the first national vaccine mandate to be announced in a Western democracy.
Austria has one of Europe’s highest national coronavirus infection rates, with 14,212 new cases registered in 24 hours on Thursday. And the Alpine country has one of the lowest vaccination rates in Western Europe, with just 66 percent of the population fully inoculated.
Recent restrictions on unvaccinated people have failed to bring the outbreak sufficiently under control, leading to the measures announced on Friday.
“For a long time — maybe too long — I and others assumed that it must be possible to convince people in Austria to voluntarily get vaccinated,” Mr. Schallenberg said on Friday. “We therefore have reached a very difficult decision to introduce a national vaccine mandate.” » | Christopher F. Schuetze and Elian Peltier | Friday, November 19, 2021
Covid-19 : l'Autriche va rendre la vaccination obligatoire à partir du 1er février, une première dans l'UE : Le chancelier Alexander Schallenberg a en outre annoncé un confinement de sa population dès lundi, y compris des vaccinés. »
