Austria scraps mandatory Covid vaccines as Austrians reject further doses

THE Health Minister of Austria announced on Thursday, June 23 that mandatory Covid vaccines will be scrapped in the country because even those already vaccinated “are now reluctant to be given another dose.”

Speaking at a press conference in Vienna, Austria’s Health Minister Johannes Rauch said: “We now have to live with Covid, so we are going to implement a series of measures, which means the end of mandatory vaccines.

Originally, the strategy was created when hospitals were overcrowded, Rauch said.

The plan “had been implemented in a different context. but the Omicron variant changed the rules.”

However, “even those who had agreed to be vaccinated are now reluctant to be given another dose.”

He added that the law was not considered “necessary either from a medical or constitutional point of view.”

He also noted that the creation of the mandatory vaccine rule had actually created “a deep division within Austrian society.”

“There are currently many arguments to say that this attack on fundamental rights is not justified,’ Constitutional Minister Karoline Edtstadler said.

She noted that the law had failed to convert many who chose not to get jabbed.

According to the latest data, around 62 per cent of the population of Austria has a valid vaccination certificate, a rate that puts Austria behind many Western European countries, Karoline Edtstadler noted.

The data showed more than 18,700 deaths since the emergence of Covid in the country.

The rule was first announced on November 30 by former Health Minister Wolfgang Mückstein and Constitutional Minister Karoline Edtstadler and came into force on February 5.

“There is no alternative to compulsory vaccinations,” the government officials said at the time.

Following the news, on January 20, anti-Mandate protesters took to the streets in Austria.

🗣 – 🇦🇹 #Austria Protests continue in Vienna, residents against forced vaccination. pic.twitter.com/Hq906bcxVg

— Oleg But (@olegbut52) January 21, 2022

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