Austria Gets Tough Against the Unvaccinated. Is it the Right Move?
It’s hard to argue with the numbers in Austria—a country in the grip of Europe’s punishing fourth wave of the pandemic. Daily case counts are soaring, with more than 14,000 reported yesterday—nearly twice as many as the daily total during the then-record second wave in November 2020. Now however, unlike a year ago, a vaccine is available, and the government appears to have lost patience with Austrians who are resisting the shots.
According to my colleague Ciara Nugent’s reporting, Austria’s vaccination rates are by no means terrible. Just over 69% of Austrians have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. That’s close to the E.U. average of 70%, but lagging behind some western European neighbors, like France and Italy, at 76% and 78% respectively. But that still leaves a lot of people unprotected, exacerbating the current surge. In response, the government is cracking down: on Friday, it sent the country back into lockdown for three weeks and announced the first national COVID-19 vaccine mandate in the western world. Already, the mandate seems to be working, with daily vaccine numbers in Austria growing rapidly over the weekend:
Under the new rule, which is due to go into effect February 1, people who are not fully vaccinated will receive vaccination appointments and will be fined the equivalent of about $4,000 if they fail to show up for the shots. In the shorter term, when the three-week lockdown ends, restrictions will remain in place for the unvaccinated—including prohibitions on going to bars, restaurants, hotels, gyms and other public venues. Unvaccinated people will only be permitted to go to work if they can produce a negative COVID-19 test at least twice a week.
“There are too many among us who haven’t shown solidarity,” Austrian chancellor Alexander Schallenberg told reporters on Friday. “Raising the vaccination rate is the only way to break this vicious circle.”
Not all Austrians are on-board with the new rules. Some 40,000 people protested the governments’ measures in Vienna on Saturday, carrying signs reading “no to vaccines” and “down with the fascist dictatorship.” Far right-affiliated groups, which have played a key role in spreading anti-vaccine information, were prominent at the marches.
Austria is not alone in seeing protests in response to new COVID rules. In Rotterdam, the Netherlands, crowds torched hundreds of cars and threw rocks at police officers. In Brussels, members of a 30,000-strong march against masks and home-working lit fireworks and broke into shops.
The virus, meantime, is burning its own path across Europe, heedless of social uprisings. Protests do not stop pandemics; vaccines do—a sound and simple argument governments continue trying to make.
TODAY'S CORONAVIRUS OUTLOOK
More than 566 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been shipped to various U.S. states as of yesterday afternoon, of which more than 451million doses have been administered, according to TIME's vaccine tracker. About 59.1% of Americans have been completely vaccinated.
More than 257 million people around the world had been diagnosed with COVID-19 as of 12 a.m. E.T. today, and more than 5.1 million people have died. On Nov. 21, there were 387,081 new cases and 4,401 new deaths confirmed global
Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
And here's every country that has reported over 5 million cases:
The U.S. had recorded more than 47.7 million coronavirus cases as of 12 a.m. E.T. today. More than 771,000 people have died. On Nov. 21, there were 28,719 new cases and 105 new deaths confirmed in the U.S.
Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending:
Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of Nov. 22, 12 a.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Federal employees are broadly complying with President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate, with more than 90% having received at least one dose by today’s deadline, reports the Associated Press. The mandate, which Biden announced in September, affects 3.5 million workers, requiring them either to be fully vaccinated or secure a valid religious or medical exemption. Workers who are not in compliance face the threat of termination after undergoing what the government calls “counseling” sessions with their supervisors to ensure they either get the shots or secure one of the proper exemptions.
Fully vaccinated people can gather for Thanksgiving without masks, Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN yesterday. Fauci stressed that masks should stay in place while people are traveling and if they are unaware of the vaccine status of any of the people at their holiday celebrations. Encountering unvaccinated family members at Thanksgiving celebrations is a real risk, as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that more than 26% of the eligible population age 5 and older—or 83 million people—have yet to receive even a first dose of a vaccine.
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is 100% successful at preventing infection in adolescents 12 to 15 years old, according to late-stage vaccine trials reported by the Washington Post. In a sample group of 2,228 participants, 30 COVID-19 cases were diagnosed, all of which were among subjects who had received a placebo. One limitation to the perfect performance of the vaccine: the study tracked participants only from seven days to four months after receipt of a second dose.
After getting through from a summer surge fueled by the Delta variant, the U.S. is once again seeing an uptick of COVID-19 cases, just as the Thanksgiving travel period is beginning, reports the New York Times. On average, more than 90,000 cases are being reported daily, with over 30 states seeing sustained increases in infections. The hardest hit parts of the nation are the upper Midwest and the Northeast. Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire are all facing major outbreaks despite comparatively high vaccination rates across New England.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says it will need 55 years to process Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for information on the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, reports the Daily Mail. That delay—which would not see all data released until 2076—is partly due to the fact that the requesting group, Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency, is seeking 329,000 pages of information and the FDA says that staffing limitations make it impossible to release more than 500 pages per month. The FDA says that it is further hamstrung by 400 other pending FOIA requests.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com. If you have specific questions you'd like us to answer, please send them to covidquestions@time.com.
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Today's newsletter was written by Jeffrey Kluger and edited by Angela Haupt. Ciara Nugent contributed reporting.
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