Following Austria’s lockdown of those who are unvaccinated, the country’s Interior Ministry confirmed that 15,000 people have been stopped by police, while 120 people have been fined during the first 24 hours of the new rule being enacted. The law came into effect on Sunday 14 November, and means that all unvaccinated Austrians over the age of 12 – around 2 million people – have been put under lockdown as the government threatens substantial fines.
While the unvaccinated over the age of 12 are confined to their homes except for essential purposes such as going to work, school, exercise or buying essential groceries, the fully-vaccinated majority can live their lives freely.
Breaching the lockdown results in a fine of up to €3,600. According to the country’s Interior Minister Karl Nehammer, 15,000 people have been checked by police throughout Austria within the first 24 hours of the mandate going into effect. In a news conference, Mr Nehammer said that about 120 fines had been handed out so far by police officers who were tasked with enforcing the contentious mandate.
“Police officers perform the ungrateful but important task of inspecting public spaces,” Mr Nehammer said.
Local media reported the Interior Minister as saying: “It’s a tough job. The pressure to control has been massively increased, and that will continue for the next few days.” He said that the main focus of control was busy streets and restaurants, according to Austrian publication Kronen Zeitung.
Those who do not comply will face a large financial punishment. Fines of €500 to €3,600 can be levied if a person is found to have breached the rules, reports state.
Announcing the news last weekend, Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said during a news conference that individuals who have chosen not to be vaccinated should “not leave your apartment” except for “certain reasons”. He also acknowledged that about one third of Austria’s population, equating to around 2 million people, will be impacted by the 10-day rule.
Children younger than the age of 12 and those who have recently recovered from Covid will be immune from the controls, the government said. However, unvaccinated people will have to stay at home unless they are engaged in business or travel classified as essential, the rule stipulates.
The county’s General Director for Public Security, Franz Ruff, reportedly said that the tough new sanctions mean that “a high level of control” can be ensured.
“Thanks to the additional patrols and the standby units that exist throughout Austria, a high level of control can be guaranteed,” Ruf said, another media outlet, Kleine Zeitung, reported.
The Guardian reported that the country’s Interior Minister, Mr Nehammer, said that the enforcement of the law can “happen anytime and anywhere” and that “every citizen has to expect to be checked”.
The move was met with sustained criticism from opposition party members, who questioned whether the law was constitutional. The Freedom Party argued that it would create a two-tier society of second class citizens, reiterating similar concerns from civil liberties groups about different vaccine passport schemes that have been introduced in several U.S. cities and many European nations.
The law has been met with determined resistance, with demonstrations erupting in Austria’s capital, Vienna, as well as Salzburg in response to the lockdown, with the Freedom Party pledging to challenge the rule’s legality. However, government officials, including Schallenberg, argued that the lockdown was necessary to respond to the recent rise in Covid cases in the country. Recent government data asserts that 65 per cent of Austria’s population is fully vaccinated.
Schallenberg said that his aim was to ensure that the unvaccinated become vaccinated “and to not look down on the vaccinated”.
“My aim is very clearly to get the unvaccinated to get themselves vaccinated and not to lock down the vaccinated, in the long term, the way out of this vicious circle we are in—and it is a vicious circle, we are stumbling from wave to lockdown, and that can’t carry on ad infinitum—is only vaccination,” he said in a radio interview.
The Independent reported that the two-tier restrictions “spurred a jabb surge,” but stated that “frustration simmers” beneath the surface and that “many unvaccinated Austrians are standing firm” regardless. While more than 462,000 Austrians have come forward for jabs since the plan was announced (according to government data), a “vocal minority” remain “unlikely to get jabbed amid doubts about the effectiveness of the new restrictions,” the paper added.
Neighbouring Germany has also indicated that it may reintroduce some restrictions on social gatherings and carry out checks of vaccine status of tests results on public transport in a reported effort to limit infection rates.
Austria’s plan has heralded in a lockdown “without precedent” and is likely to generate more criticism of the government and motivate Austria’s anti-lockdown protesters further.
In France, where protests against vaccine mandates are a routine occurrence, Le Monde described the lockdown exclusively for the unvaccinated as “unprecedented,” adding that the number of patients being admitted to hospital “sounded the alarm bell”.
Meanwhile, Libération, the centre-left newspaper, stated that the measures mean unvaccinated Austrians now “face a wall”, describing their options as “booster or confinement”.
Austria’s biggest newspaper, Kronen Zeitung <https://www.krone.at/2557848> , added that the measures were part of an effort to give “vaccinated people as much freedom as possible”.
In a comment piece published in German tabloid newspaper Bild, journalist and author Filipp Piatov argued that the measures were an attempt to “intimidate” Austrians into getting vaccinated, adding that the country has “long been considered a blueprint for Germany” is now setting a “daunting example”.
Piatov also asserted that young people are being “put under massive pressure to get vaccinated against a virus that is hardly dangerous for them”, and added. “this policy against children and young people must not” be introduced in Germany.
It comes as the Executive Director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, Liam Herrick, told Irish media that it is “welcome” that such an approach is not being considered here.
Referencing Austria’s lockdown of the unvaccinated, he said: “I think that there’s very significant concerns about what the Austrian Government are doing. I think it’s welcome that the Taoiseach has indicated that it is not something he would consider here”.