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Austria will carry out a large-scale campaign to test for COVID-19 in an attempt to shorten the second lockdown that will begin on Tuesday, Vienna Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz said today.
The chancellor, referring to the large-scale tests in neighboring Slovakia, told ORF public radio that his government had decided “to go the same way.”
Two-thirds of the population were tested two weeks ago, and the results showed just over 1% of positive cases.
On Saturday, Kurz announced the reinforcement of measures against the virus in Austria, with the closure of schools and non-essential shops from Tuesday until December 6, in order to curb the outbreak of contamination, and urged his fellow citizens to avoid any contact.
Today, he explained that large-scale tests could allow the country to reopen in December, without specifying whether this program would be on the same scale as Slovakia.
“We want to establish large-scale examinations at the end of the lockdown so that schools and other sectors can reopen safely,” said the chancellor, adding that teachers would be among the first to be evaluated.
“We know that many people are concerned about being able to celebrate [o Natal] at least, with at least some of their relatives, “he continued.
The government will give more details on the project next week, which will be a “logistical challenge,” according to Kurz.
The chancellor was criticized for taking too long to implement more drastic actions in the fall, when the outbreak began to grow again.
Partial lockdown was introduced two weeks ago and failed to stop the spread of the virus.
With 8.8 million inhabitants, Austria was relatively spared from the first wave of the pandemic, but the second wave is putting a lot of pressure on the country’s hospitals.
Authorities registered 5,665 new cases today, a lower number than in previous days, and, for the first time since October 2, the number of active infections has decreased.
However, the number of patients in Intensive Care Units (almost 600 people) increased by 30% in one week.
In total, 1,829 people died from covid-19 in Austria, according to the official gazette.
The covid-19 pandemic caused at least 1,313,471 deaths derived from more than 54 million cases of infection worldwide, according to a report prepared by the French agency AFP.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected at the end of December 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.
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