Austria’s lockdown ends: between joy and worry

The incidence figures are falling in Austria, and the country is largely ending the corona lockdown. However, the situation in the intensive care units remains tense. Is the easing coming too soon?

Third Advent on the Christmas market is now possible again in Austria – almost everywhere, if not for everyone. Unvaccinated people have to stay outside. For those who have been vaccinated and those who have recovered, the three-week lockdown has now come to an end: They are allowed to go to the cinema and the theater again; on Monday all shops will open again, not just those for groceries.

The situation in the intensive care units remains critical

Anyone who is not one of the 44,000 people who demonstrated against the compulsory vaccination in Vienna on Saturday is happy. “I am very happy that the lockdown has ended and I hope that the virus will finally be cleared up,” said a passerby. And another has the economic consequences of the lockdown in view: “Of course I am happy. It is also very important for the economy that something goes on again.”

The lockdown has worked, the corona incidence figures are falling every day, and all Austrian federal states have left the threatening thousand mark behind them for the time being. But the relaxation is relative. There is growing concern that the “respite”, as Austria’s Chancellor Karl Nehammer put it, could only be a short one – because there is a risk of a fifth wave, perhaps as early as January because the new virus variant Omikron could use the respite to attack.

Walter Hasibeder, President of the Austrian intensive care physicians, would have preferred to wait with the openings. “I can’t understand it at the moment because we’re just too tense,” he says. “In Tyrol, more than 30 percent of the possible intensive care places are occupied by Covid-19 patients, in Vorarlberg it is over 50 percent.” The situation is still tense, said Hasibeder: “Important operations are still being postponed.”

Displeasure with the Austrian “patchwork quilt”

Vorarlberg and Tyrol, of all the two federal states with the still highest seven-day incidences, immediately open everything that the central government in Vienna allows. Vorarlberg’s governor Markus Wallner, ÖVP, argues with the neighbors around Lake Constance: Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein – they would have opened everything.

Wallner’s party friend Elisabeth Köstinger, Minister of Tourism, supports the two ski tourism countries Tyrol and Vorarlberg as best she can: “Especially when unlocking and the coming winter season, which will take place this year”, emphasizes the ÖVP politician. The government fought hard for this: “And me above all.”

The “patchwork carpet” in Austria is lamented: nine federal states, five different routes. Corona incidence numbers are apparently not decisive, otherwise Tyrol and Vorarlberg would have to tighten things up. Vienna’s mayor, the SPÖ politician Michael Ludwig, does not let bars open until December 20th – so that he doesn’t have to close again, so his argument. And Upper Austria is extending the lockdown for everyone by one week, although it is no longer at the bottom of the corona infections – but it is still a stronghold of the vaccine opponents.