Austria will carry out a large-scale covid-19 testing campaign in an attempt to shorten the second confinement that will start on Tuesday, Vienna Government Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said today.
The chancellor, in reference to large-scale testing in neighboring Slovakia, told public radio ORF that his government had decided to “follow the same path”.
Two-thirds of the population was tested two weeks ago, with results showing just over 1% positive cases.
On Saturday, Kurz announced the reinforcement of measures against the virus in Austria, with the closure of non-essential schools and stores from Tuesday and until December 6, in order to stop the outbreak of contamination, and urged his fellow citizens to avoid any contact.
Today, he explained that the 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 tests at the end of confinement so that schools and other sectors can reopen safely,” said the chancellor, adding that teachers would be among the first to be tested.
“We know that many people are concerned with being able to celebrate [o Natal] at the very least, with at least some of your relatives, ”he continued.
The Government will give more details about 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 started to grow again.
Partial confinement was introduced two weeks ago, failing to stop the virus from spreading.
With 8.8 million inhabitants, Austria was relatively spared in the first wave of the pandemic, but the second wave is putting a lot of pressure on the country’s hospitals.
Authorities today registered 5,665 new cases – less 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 bulletin.
The covid-19 pandemic caused at least 1,313,471 deaths resulting from more than 54 million cases of infection worldwide, according to a report made by the French agency AFP.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.
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