Today in Austria: A roundup of the latest news on Friday
Every weekday, The Local brings you an English-language summary of the news you need to know in Austria.
Austria passes vaccine mandate
As expected, Austria's parliament passed a law making vaccination compulsory for adults yesterday evening.
The overwhelming majority of MPs (137 out of 170) from all parties voted in favour of the law, with the leaders of the opposition Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the liberal NEOS lending their backing to the centre right-green coalition.
Health Minister Wolfgang Mückstein told MPs the law was "urgently needed".
The far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) opposed the law as expected, with leader Herbert Kickl saying the law was "health communism" and an "attack" on the population.
Austrian far-right leader could face prosecution over mask rules
Also in yesterday's parliamentary session, the National Council extradited far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) leader Herbert Kickl, paving the way for him to face investigation over an alleged violation of the legal requirement to wear a mask at demonstrations.
Vienna legal authorities had to ask the National Council for approval to begin their investigation, because of parliamentary immunity -- but a majority found there was no connection to his political activities. It's the second time Kickl has faced investigation for this kind of case.
Another Covid record for Austria
For the first time, more than 200,000 people in Austria have a current confirmed Covid infection.
Thursday is the day for the weekly updates from Austria's Covid Commission. We don't expect a change in the 'traffic light' risk assessment any time soon, as the whole country is currently classified 'red' or very high risk due to the Omicron wave.
But the Commission also issues weekly recommendations, and yesterday they warned that an increase in occupancy of hospital beds could pose problems, even if intensive care units do not get overloaded.
The Commission said that if Covid cases reach a level of eight percent of standard care beds, this could start to cause difficulties, especially if the Omicron wave also leads to staff shortages.
Carinthia pushed to testing limits
The region of Carinthia recorded over 1,000 Covid cases in 24 hours for the first time, and the severity of the wave has pushed testing capacity in the western region to its limits.
As a result, it will no longer be possible to 'test out' of quarantine as a contact person after five days (freitesten in German). People who previously had the option to end quarantine after five days with a negative test will instead have to observe a full ten-day quarantine, with some exceptions for people working in critical infrastructure such as healthcare workers.
Delays in Austria's Covid reporting
Austria's Health and Interior Ministries still haven't reported their official Covid case numbers for Thursday, and have told media they expect further delays in the coming days.
The reporting systems are up and running without disruption, but the high number of cases means that cleaning up the data to remove errors and duplicate results (for example, the same person performing two tests) is a more complex task.
In our daily Covid blog, we use the figures provided by AGES and we note which day the data was last reported.
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Austria passes vaccine mandate
As expected, Austria's parliament passed a law making vaccination compulsory for adults yesterday evening.
The overwhelming majority of MPs (137 out of 170) from all parties voted in favour of the law, with the leaders of the opposition Social Democrats (SPÖ) and the liberal NEOS lending their backing to the centre right-green coalition.
Health Minister Wolfgang Mückstein told MPs the law was "urgently needed".
The far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) opposed the law as expected, with leader Herbert Kickl saying the law was "health communism" and an "attack" on the population.
Austrian far-right leader could face prosecution over mask rules
Also in yesterday's parliamentary session, the National Council extradited far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) leader Herbert Kickl, paving the way for him to face investigation over an alleged violation of the legal requirement to wear a mask at demonstrations.
Vienna legal authorities had to ask the National Council for approval to begin their investigation, because of parliamentary immunity -- but a majority found there was no connection to his political activities. It's the second time Kickl has faced investigation for this kind of case.
Another Covid record for Austria
For the first time, more than 200,000 people in Austria have a current confirmed Covid infection.
Thursday is the day for the weekly updates from Austria's Covid Commission. We don't expect a change in the 'traffic light' risk assessment any time soon, as the whole country is currently classified 'red' or very high risk due to the Omicron wave.
But the Commission also issues weekly recommendations, and yesterday they warned that an increase in occupancy of hospital beds could pose problems, even if intensive care units do not get overloaded.
The Commission said that if Covid cases reach a level of eight percent of standard care beds, this could start to cause difficulties, especially if the Omicron wave also leads to staff shortages.
Carinthia pushed to testing limits
The region of Carinthia recorded over 1,000 Covid cases in 24 hours for the first time, and the severity of the wave has pushed testing capacity in the western region to its limits.
As a result, it will no longer be possible to 'test out' of quarantine as a contact person after five days (freitesten in German). People who previously had the option to end quarantine after five days with a negative test will instead have to observe a full ten-day quarantine, with some exceptions for people working in critical infrastructure such as healthcare workers.
Delays in Austria's Covid reporting
Austria's Health and Interior Ministries still haven't reported their official Covid case numbers for Thursday, and have told media they expect further delays in the coming days.
The reporting systems are up and running without disruption, but the high number of cases means that cleaning up the data to remove errors and duplicate results (for example, the same person performing two tests) is a more complex task.
In our daily Covid blog, we use the figures provided by AGES and we note which day the data was last reported.
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