Vienna’s city health councilor Peter Hacker (SPÖ) was already certain in mid-November: “The mask obligation will certainly remain,” he told “Oe24” at the time. Even if the warm Corona autumn, which everyone had warned about in the summer, did not materialize, Hacker now saw new dangers approaching the Viennese. Therefore he does not want to deviate from the FFP2 mask requirement. There are now fears of a “big wave of Covid” in winter, Hacker warned. “Our big concern is the surge we expect in December, January, February – the big winter surge, so to speak,” the city council said.
A month later the Covid situation still hasn’t changed. 6751 new corona virus infections were registered in Austria on Tuesday. According to AGES, an average of 4831 infections were detected each day in the past week. Considering the last two years, this is a low value and hardly worth mentioning.
As of Wednesday morning, there were 1,147 infected people in the hospital. Of these, 61 are in intensive care, two less than yesterday. Here, too, Austria experienced completely different times. A year ago, intensive care units were hit much harder by corona infections. At that time, 556 seriously ill people were being treated in intensive care units across Austria – almost ten times more than now. In addition, 1,655 patients tested positive in normal wards.
The number of corona-infected patients in local hospitals is likely to increase slightly in the next two weeks, but there is currently no indication of a new surge. On the contrary.
In the last two waves of the coronavirus, the number of cases between the ages of 5 and 14 has increased. The other age groups are followed up with a few weeks delay. However, experts report that positive tests are currently declining significantly in the 5- to 14-year-old age group. Over the past two weeks, the seven-day incidence in this group has dropped from over 300 to 200. So there’s no sign of a new wave.
He no longer believes in the dangerous new variants of the crown. In fact they seem more unlikely at the time of an all-clear in Vienna. With the current course of Covid, the city may want to distract itself from other concerns, such as bottlenecks at hospitals due to lack of staff. The dramatic reports are now multiplying.
Hacker’s latest project shouldn’t change that. An architectural competition for the Hietzing clinic will begin shortly. The hospital must have a modern look. Instead of around 15 pavilions, large central buildings are to be built. The competition at the European level will start in a few days. This will not change the understaffing. The action was met with sharp criticism by Vienna FPÖ leader Dominik Nepp.
