All you can do is hope that these days when everything is closed actually have an effect. “You have to accept it,” Weidenauer said of the lockdown. They came for the day from their home in Austria’s Waldviertel region to get a glimpse of the markets before everything shuts down. Nehammer said Sunday that police performed 150,000 checks on compliance with the new rules in just one week, according to APA.Īt the Christmas market on Vienna’s iconic Rathausplatz square, Rene Schlosser and Silvia Weidenauer sipped mulled wine from heart-shaped red mugs. Then officials implemented lockdown measures just for unvaccinated people. The lockdown is the latest and strictest measure Austrian officials have introduced to combat a fourth surge of infections and deaths.Įarlier this month, the government first tried to pressure unvaccinated people to get the jab, barring them from restaurants, hotels and large events. They included concerned citizens but also right-wing extremists and known neo-Nazis, he said. Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said Sunday that the anti-coronavirus protest scene is radicalizing.Īn “extremely diverse group of people” took part in the protests, Nehammer said, according to the Austrian Press Agency. A Saturday protest in the capital city of Vienna drew 40,000 people, according to police, including members of far-right parties and groups. The new measures, especially the vaccine mandate, have been met with fierce opposition among some. “That people’s freedoms need to be restricted again is, believe me, also difficult for me to bear,” he said. Of the impending lockdown, Schallenberg said he and other officials had hoped this summer that such restrictions would no longer be necessary, and that it was a tough decision to impose a new lockdown that affected vaccinated people. By Euronews and AFP Updated: One of Germanys most popular Christmas markets has fallen victim to the countrys worsening COVID situation. Hospitals, especially those in the hardest hit regions of Salzburg and Upper Austria, are overwhelmed as the number of coronavirus patients rises in intensive care units.
On Saturday, Austria reported 15,297 new infections, after a week in which daily cases topped 10,000. Just under 66% of Austria’s 8.9 million people are fully vaccinated, one of the lowest rates in Western Europe.
In an interview Sunday in the newspaper Kurier, Schallenberg said it’s “sad” that the Austrian government had to resort to a mandate in order to ensure that enough people get vaccinated. “This is for me the most beautiful time of the year here in Vienna,” she said. She has come nearly daily to enjoy the atmosphere before the stalls closed. Across the market, Maria Fernanda Monasterio enjoyed a hot chocolate and lamented that the market was shutting down.
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