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The number is shocking: 2,317 new cases of infection from Friday to Saturday. Even if there were late registrations for the past two days, since Thursday, an average of more than 1,500 people have tested positive every day. That’s too much, too much. (* see note at the end of the comment)
In Germany, it would be 15,000 cases a day, but stricter measures have already been taken in fewer than 5,000 cases. The 7-day infection value, which is so important in Austria as a whole, is almost 100; in Germany, the threshold of measures to be taken was recently lowered to 35. In Vienna and Tyrol it exceeds 100.
There is no need to panic about the healthcare system yet, but the example from the Czech Republic shows how quickly hospital beds can become narrow with exponential expansion. The government is asking Czech doctors abroad to go home there to help; the army is building a huge emergency hospital in the exhibition halls of Prague.
In the first wave of Corona, the Austrian government was praised for acting faster than other countries, keeping the number of infections lower than elsewhere. The number of deaths in Austria was also significantly lower than in many other European countries. Now the impression is clearly different. A full new closure won’t be necessary, but more stringent gatherings, mask requirements, and nursing homes are inevitable. And contact tracing, rightly called a miracle weapon, no longer works in some parts of the country, as recently happened with an editor of “Zeit im Bild” who, while corona positive, was not contacted by authorities for days. There are probably countless cases of this, unknown throughout Austria. And now it is no longer necessary to take into account the dates of the elections. It is time to act.
Note 12:29 pm: The Vienna Health Advisor Hacker is revising the original number for Vienna from more than 800 new infections in the federal capital to 599 new infections. Apparently there were technical problems with the acquisition. Therefore, the actual infection figures should be viewed with caution.
