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Services offered by city authorities, such as flu vaccination, will also be largely maintained, and opening hours will be limited. Mayor Klaus Luger (SPÖ) announced it at a press conference on Sunday with Councilor Michael Raml (FPÖ), Magistrate Director Ulrike Huemer and Health Director Dietmar Nemeth.
More than 4,000 of Linz’s 208,000 residents were directly affected by Covid-19, on Sunday 1,438 tested positive and 2,391 in quarantine, 150 were treated in the hospital and 20 in an intensive care unit, Luger said. He personally understands the second shutdown of the federal government, “when almost 80 percent of intensive care beds are occupied, it is necessary to take all measures to reduce personal contacts,” he called on people to support the measures.
“But I’m glad that there are differences with the first shutdown, that other parts of our economy are still active and almost all service providers,” said the mayor. That is why all the day-care centers, kindergartens and nurseries in the city remain open. “No one in Linz should be afraid of not knowing that their children are being cared for,” Luger said. The occupancy rate for the past few weeks demonstrates the urgent need, 71 percent of the city’s nurseries and kindergartens were used in the previous week and 80 percent of the extracurricular facilities available.
The opening hours of the municipal authorities will be reduced from 8 am to 12 pm in the morning. Luger asked to use online services and make appointments.
Notifications in 24 hours
The city’s contact trackers were working on the attack, “but we can still send separation notices within 24 hours.” Communication that someone is a contact person or has tested positive also works within 24 hours, Huemer emphasized. The workforce has doubled since March, the processes are constantly being evaluated and adjusted, the municipal director said. A hotline to support the teleservice center will go live next week and employees, especially volunteers from other business areas, will start school on Monday. There are also positive cases and quarantined employees in the magistrate, so teams are divided and protective measures are taken.
City Health Councilor Raml saw mostly failures of the federal government responsible for the tense situation in the crown and the recent shutdown. He warned that online retailers would crowd out smaller stationary ones and rush to stores after closing. “Despite all the fixation for Corona, we must not forget that there are also other diseases and urgent operations,” he appealed to the Linzers not to postpone the necessary treatments.
The city’s flu vaccination campaign will continue to be offered, including Monday and Thursday afternoons. There are still 4,000 to 5,000 doses of vaccination available. You shouldn’t expect miracles from a Covid-19 vaccine. “I would like to emphasize that I am opposed to mandatory corona vaccination, but we want to make it possible for anyone who wants to get vaccinated to do so.” That is already in the works, Raml said.
Nementh said that criticism from the authorities hurts because you have been working to the limit for months. He saw three hurdles in contact tracing: on the one hand, it happens that laboratories are behind in reporting test results, then it is not certain that positive results of antigen tests in companies, organizations and doctors in the private practice is entered into the system, and finally There is a structural problem in EDP’s reporting system, which is overloaded with 100,000 cases. Linz introduced his own system early on in lock one and had a good overview of his microcosm. Expect the values to stabilize in a few days.
The second wave is stronger than even the experts believe, so there is a pact for Linz, “which contains elements of civil society and cohesion,” Luger said. In the main square of innovation there are citizen initiatives and aid to the neighborhood, as well as coordination to help people who are alone. The crisis team would process in detail the consequences of the lockdown, including the question of whether the short-term parking zones would be lifted again.
- Detailed information at linz.at/coronavirus
- Flu shot in the Health and Sports division from Monday to Friday from 7.30 to 11.30 and Monday and Thursday from 2 to 4 p.m.
- All initiatives and projects to help the neighborhood at innovationshauptplatz.linz.at
