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‘The pandemic has not been mastered’: Vienna to tighten Covid measures

Vienna has again decided against following the rest of the country in relaxing Covid measures, saying on Thursday stricter measures were warranted and that “the nationwide easing came too early”.

Published: 17 March 2022 17:27 CET

People line up outside the Stadthalle city hall in Vienna, Austria to get tested for Covid. (Photo by ALEX HALADA / AFP)

People line up outside the Stadthalle city hall in Vienna, Austria to get tested for Covid. (Photo by ALEX HALADA / AFP)

Mayor Michael Ludwig (SPÖ) said on Thursday that the nation’s capital will continue to take a different path to the federal government.

Measures will not be relaxed, while several rules in hospitals and nursing homes will be tightened.

“The pandemic has not been mastered,” Ludwig said at a press conference.

Prior to the announcement there had been some suggestions mask rules would be relaxed, however the Vienna government declined to do so.

Only one visitor will be allowed per patient, while two visitors will be allowed per day in nursing homes.

Anyone visiting hospitals or nursing homes must be in compliance with the ‘2G-Plus’ rule, which means they need to be either vaccinated or have recovered from the virus, as well as possessing a negative test.

Ludwig also indicated he disagreed with the federal government’s change in testing policy, although he said Vienna would not subsidise the costs of the tests.

“The federal government collects the corresponding taxes for this,” Ludwig said.

EXPLAINED: Austria’s new Covid-19 testing rules

From April 1st, the number of free Covid-19 tests will be limited to 10 per month for every person living in Austria.

This is a stark change in Austria’s approach to managing Covid-19 and coincides with an end to full quarantine for close contacts of positive cases from March 21st.

Ludwig said he felt the system would be hard to administer.

“There are so many unanswered questions that nobody has been able to answer for me yet.

“It’s not yet clear to me on the basis of which computer program or which statistics who then determines who wants to take the fifth or sixth test of the month.”

Vienna has taken a much tighter course when it comes to Covid measures for much of the pandemic.

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Vienna Festival director Milo Rau hits back at anti-Semitism accusations

As the conflict in Gaza sharply polarises opinion, “we must be inflexible” in defending the free exchange of ideas and opinions, the acclaimed Swiss director told AFP in an interview this week.

“I’m not going to take a step aside… If we let the antagonism of the war and of our society seep into our cultural and academic institutions, we will have completely lost,” said the 47-year-old, who will inaugurate the Wiener Festwochen, a festival of theatre, concerts, opera, film and lectures that runs until June 23rd in the Austrian capital and that has taken on a more political turn under his tenure.

The Swiss director has made his name as a provocateur, whether travelling to Moscow to stage a re-enactment of the trial of Russian protest punk band Pussy Riot, using children to play out the story of notorious Belgian paedophile Marc Dutroux, or trying to recruit Islamic State jihadists as actors.

Completely ridiculous

The Vienna Festival has angered Austria’s conservative-led government — which is close to Israel — by inviting Greek former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and French Nobel Prize winner for literature Annie Ernaux, both considered too critical of Israel.

A speech ahead of the festival on Judenplatz (Jews’ Square) by Israeli-German philosopher Omri Boehm — who has called for replacing Israel with a bi-national state for Arabs and Jews — also made noise.

“Who will be left to invite? Every day, there are around ten articles accusing us of being anti-Semitic, saying that our flag looks like the Palestinian flag, completely ridiculous things,” Rau said, as he worked from a giant bed which has been especially designed by art students and installed at the festival office.

Hamas’ bloody October 7th assault on southern Israel and the devastating Israeli response have stoked existing rancour over the Middle East conflict between two diametrically opposed camps in Europe.

In this climate, “listening to the other side is already treachery,” lamented the artistic director.

“Wars begin in this impossibility of listening, and I find it sad that we Europeans are repeating war at our level,” he said.

As head of also the NTGent theatre in the Belgian city of Ghent, he adds his time currently “is divided between a pro-Palestinian country and a pro-Israeli country,” or between “colonial guilt” in Belgium and “genocide guilt” in Austria, Adolf Hitler’s birthplace.

Institutional revolution

The “Free Republic of Vienna” will be proclaimed on Friday as this year’s Vienna Festival celebrates. according to Rau, “a second modernism, democratic, open to the world” in the city of the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and artist and symbolist master Gustav Klimt.

Some 50,000 people are expected to attend the opening ceremony on the square in front of Vienna’s majestic neo-Gothic town hall.

With Rau describing it as an “institutional revolution” and unlike any other festival in Europe, the republic has its own anthem, its own flag and a council made up of Viennese citizens, as well as honorary members, including Varoufakis and Ernaux, who will participate virtually in the debates.

The republic will also have show trials — with real lawyers, judges and politicians participating — on three weekends.

Though there won’t be any verdicts, Rau himself will be in the dock to embody “the elitist art system”, followed by the republic of Austria and finally by the anti-immigrant far-right Freedom Party (FPOe), which leads polls in the Alpine EU member ahead of September national elections.

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