BERLIN: Austria will end its lockdown for unvaccinated residents next Monday — one day before a COVID-19 vaccine mandate takes effect in the country, the government announced Wednesday, according to Austrian news agency APA.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer and Health Minister Wolfgang Mueckstein said the measure, which was introduced in November, was no longer needed because there was no threat of hospital intensive care units being overstretched, APA reported.
For weeks, the lockdown for the unvaccinated has been “a measure that many people complained about, but that was unavoidable for health policy reasons,” Nehammer said.
On Feb. 1, a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for adults — the first of its kind in Europe — will take effect in the small Alpine country. Officials have said the mandate is necessary because vaccination rates remain too low. They say it will ensure that Austria’s hospitals are not overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients. So far, 75.4 percent of the country’s residents have been fully vaccinated.
Once the mandate goes into effect, authorities will write to every household to inform them of the new rules.
From mid-March, police will start checking people’s vaccination status during routine checks; people who can’t produce proof of vaccination will be asked to do so in writing, and will be fined up to 600 euros ($676) if they don’t.
If authorities judge the country’s vaccination progress still to be insufficient, Nehammer said earlier this month, they would then send reminders to people who remain unvaccinated. If even that doesn’t work, people would be sent a vaccination appointment and fined if they don’t keep it. Officials hope they won’t need to use the last measure. Fines could reach 3,600 euros if people contest their punishment and full proceedings are opened.
Austria to lift lockdown for unvaccinated residents
https://arab.news/nwttg
Austria to lift lockdown for unvaccinated residents
- Once the mandate goes into effect, authorities will write to every household to inform them of the new rules
Russian minister visits Cuba as Trump ramps up pressure on Havana
- The Russian embassy in Havana said the minister would “hold a series of bilateral meetings” while in Cuba
HAVANA: Russia’s interior minister began a visit to ally Cuba on Tuesday, a show of solidarity after US President Donald Trump warned that the island’s longtime communist government “is ready to fall.”
Trump this month warned Havana to “make a deal,” the nature of which he did not divulge, or pay a price similar to Venezuela, whose leader Nicolas Maduro was ousted by US forces in a January 3 bombing raid that killed dozens of people.
Venezuela was a key ally of Cuba and a critical supplier of oil and money, which Trump has vowed to cut off.
“We in Russia regard this as an act of unprovoked armed aggression against Venezuela,” Russia’s Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev told Russian state TV Rossiya-1 of the US actions after landing in Cuba.
“This act cannot be justified in any way and once again proves the need to increase vigilance and consolidate all efforts to counter external factors,” he added.
The Russian embassy in Havana said the minister would “hold a series of bilateral meetings” while in Cuba.
Russia and Cuba, both under Western sanctions, have intensified their relations since 2022, with an isolated Moscow seeking new friends and trading partners since its invasion of Ukraine.
Cuba needs all the help it can get as it grapples with its worst economic crisis in decades and now added pressure from Washington.
Trump has warned that acting President Delcy Rodriguez will pay “a very big price” if she does not toe Washington’s line — specifically on access to Venezuela’s oil and loosening ties with US foes Cuba, Russia, China and Iran.
On Tuesday, Russia’s ambassador to Havana, Victor Koronelli, wrote on X that Kolokoltsev was in Cuba “to strengthen bilateral cooperation and the fight against crime.”
The US chief of mission in Cuba, Mike Hammer, meanwhile, met the head of the US Southern Command in Miami on Tuesday “to discuss the situation in Cuba and the Caribbean,” the embassy said on X.
The command is responsible for American forces operating in Central and South America that have carried out seizures of tankers transporting Venezuelan oil and strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats.
- Soldiers killed -
Cuba has been a thorn in the side of the United States since the revolution that swept communist Fidel Castro to power in 1959.
Havana and Moscow were close communist allies during the Cold War, but that cooperation was abruptly halted in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet bloc.
The deployment of Soviet nuclear missile sites on the island triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when Washington and Moscow came close to war.
During his first presidential term, Trump walked back a detente with Cuba launched by his predecessor Barack Obama.
Thirty-two Cuban soldiers, some of them assigned to Maduro’s security detail, were killed in the US strikes that saw the Venezuelan strongman whisked away in cuffs to stand trial in New York.
Kolokoltsev attended a memorial for the fallen men on Tuesday.
