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Schools and retail will reopen in stages in December to save Christmas.
In the end, it wasn’t just the numbers, but the pictures as well: Health Minister Rudolf Anschober recently found crowds in shopping malls “worrisome”. The government may not make the next coronavirus tightening public until late Saturday afternoon – so as not to encourage anyone to go last-minute shopping.
Because as of “Monday or Tuesday”, as was heard, the country will be completely closed again. There was talk of a “March-style shutdown” in government circles on Friday. In other words: shops and schools are also largely closed, initially “for two or three weeks”, after which, if all goes well, there should be a step-by-step opening to save the Christmas business and Christmas. herself. Three weeks from Tuesday would mean until December 8.
School closures were particularly controversial, also between the ÖVP and the Greens or between the ÖVP-led Chancellery and the ÖVP-led Ministry of Education. But here the hardliners around Sebastian Kurz are likely to have prevailed: After the upper grades, who have been at home for ten days, the younger ones will be released for homeschooling next week. The compulsory schools and kindergartens are still open, as they did in March. You must take care of children whose parents cannot work from home or take a break.
It’s about parents and teachers.
The Corona traffic light commission recommended on Thursday night to continue school lessons at least up to secondary level 1 for as long as possible, because children up to 14 years old are not “drivers in the infection process.” Why is the government not following this recommendation? You have to be attentive to the general situation. And the more parents are in the home office, the faster the chain of infection can be broken. However, there must have been heated debates about the schools at the traffic light commission meeting. One member reportedly noted that teachers were the main problem. Therefore, “distance learning” is less the order of the day than “distance learning”.
Overall, the traffic light commission, which once again reddened the entire country, concluded that additional measures were needed “as soon as possible” to bring the pandemic back under control. Reference was made to possible exit rules and entry bans in the Covid Measures Law.
Customers have been warned
The government appears to be sticking to this as commercial and service companies are also closing, with the exception of supermarkets, pharmacies, banks and post offices. We already had that in spring. Apparently some commercial companies have adapted quickly to the new situation. An electrical chain called its customers on Friday to inform them that the products they had ordered should be picked up by Saturday at the latest. On Monday they close.
For the time being, the government cited “the explosive numbers”: 9,586 positive test results were reported in 24 hours on Friday. And even if, due to technical problems in the federal epidemiological reporting system, there were again late registrations, it was the next registration. More than 3,900 Covid patients had to be treated in hospital, 567 in intensive care units. Preventing the healthcare system from collapsing is still the turquoise-green creed: it is still possible, but now you have to react again.
