Austria Suspends Europe’s First Universal Covid-19 Vaccine Mandate
Government says the Omicron variant, milder and more resistant to vaccines, makes the mandate disproportionate
The first country in Europe to adopt a universal Covid-19 vaccination mandate is backtracking, saying it will now suspend the measure based on findings showing that vaccines don’t protect well against infections by the Omicron variant.
Austria enacted the mandate last year but it has proven legally complex to design and officials fear it would face court challenges after coming into force later this month.
The mandate was set to impose hefty and regular fines on people who refused to take the vaccine, with police checking for vaccination certificates and authorities accessing medical records to identify the unvaccinated.
The decision shows the difficulties in enforcing such mandates—which have faced political and legal pushback from critics, including parts of the medical community—given vaccines’ limited success at preventing infections by the dominant Omicron variants. Although studies show they are very effective at preventing hospitalizations and death.
Neighboring Germany also announced a general vaccination mandate last year. It has yet to be adopted by parliament and is unlikely to be implemented soon.
The mandate is now no longer proportionate as a tool to curb the pandemic, Austria’s minister for the constitution Karoline Edtstadler said Wednesday.
“We must be as flexible and as adaptable as the virus is,” Ms. Edtstadler said.
The situation will be revisited in three months, she said. Should a new variant appear that would be more susceptible to the existing vaccines, the mandate could be reimposed, a spokesman for the Austrian government said.
An expert body that advises the government warned in a recent report that a new coronavirus wave could emerge in the fall.
The country of nine million continues to have relatively high infection rates. The seven-day rolling average is now 3,480 cases per million inhabitants, according to figures by Our World In Data, a project based at Oxford University. This is significantly higher than neighboring countries such as Germany, France and Italy.
Coronavirus-related hospitalizations in Austria have been rising slightly from 229 per million inhabitants on Feb. 7 to 293 on March 7, according to the project. In France and Italy, the hospitalization rate has been dropping: on March 7 it was 329 and 159 per million respectively.
Nonetheless, the country has in recent days lifted most of its pandemic restrictions as the majority of Omicron infections appear to be mild. Around 74% of Austrians have been vaccinated, meaning that there are less than one million people who would be affected by the vaccine mandate.