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“A second quarantine will take place from midnight Tuesday to the end of November,” Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz said at a news conference.
It will also take effect from 8 pm at night until 6 pm the morning curfew and gatherings of people from more than two households will be prohibited.
It will be possible to waive the curfew for only a few specific reasons, such as the need to care for another person or the travel required to work.
“It will not be possible to hold any event. This will affect the sports, culture and leisure sectors. Hotels will have to close and will only be able to cater to business travelers. We must also close restaurants and cafes, except for food services to home and take away food, ”Kurzas said.
He acknowledged that such measures “significantly interfere with our social life.”
Unlike the first quarantine, which took effect in the spring, stores will remain open, but the country’s famous Christmas markets fall into the event category and will need to close.
Universities and colleges will move to distance education, but kindergartens and other schools will remain open.
Institutions are encouraged to commute to work from home if possible.
Although Austria has suffered much less from the first wave of the pandemic than the worst affected European countries, the number of infections has risen sharply in recent weeks.
A new daily record for COVID-19 cases was reached on Friday, with 5,627 confirmed cases, and only slightly lower on Saturday, with 5,439 cases.
Meanwhile, already in early October, the number of new infections detected per day was only slightly higher than 1,000.
Kurz had previously promised to do everything possible to avoid a second quarantine, but acknowledged that the rapid spread of the virus had forced the government to take tough measures.
“Austria’s health system is one of the best in the world, but its possibilities are not limitless,” said the chancellor.
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