Not even 24 hours after he and Federal Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (VP) had presented the autumn plan against the fourth corona wave, Health Minister Wolfgang Mückstein (Greens) was confronted with re-sharpening requests from his top official in the house.
Chief Medical Officer Katharina Reich goes the most important measure in stage one (with a ten percent utilization of the intensive care beds expected by CoV patients from September 15, note) too little. The government stipulates that unvaccinated people will have to wear an FFP2 mask again in shops, vaccinated and convalescent people are only advised to do so. You would like the FFP2 mask requirement for everyone in the entire trade, criticized Reich on ORF radio the federal-state compromise on a day on which the number of new infections has risen to 2356. In this phase, where the most important thing is to keep the wave as flat as possible, the FFP2 masks are the cheapest and easiest means. In view of the low vaccination coverage, this is also important for those who have been vaccinated, said Reich. Because “they are not off the hook either because they can unfortunately pass the virus on to unvaccinated people”. From Mückstein’s office, on request from OÖN, it was said that the federal-state agreement was being adhered to.
The unvaccinated, in Austria still around 1.7 million, was criticized yesterday by the President of the Upper Austrian Medical Association, Peter Niedermoser. “More and more people are in intensive care units who shouldn’t have to lie there,” said Niedermoser of an intolerable situation. In Upper Austrian hospitals alone, 27 CoV patients would need intensive care. This would tie up valuable capacities, even though there are “easily accessible, safe and free vaccinations”.
Resistance from the police union sparked the government plan to have compliance with the mask requirement in trade checked by the executive in random samples. It is “not the job of a policeman to go to shops, maybe to the reserve chamber, too, to look into the camp to see who is wearing a mask or not,” said Hermann Greylinger, head of the SP police union. A clear no to the control order came from FCG boss Reinhard Zimmermann.
