Austria has become the first country in Europe to be vaccinated against the Corona virus, after President Alexander van der Blanc signed the law last Friday. These measures will result in those without a vaccination certificate or exemption being fined € 600. The plan is to start enforcement as early as March 15 this year.
According to the Austrian Ministry of Health website, pregnant and immunocompromised women who are unable to be vaccinated will be exempt from the immunization obligation.
The exemption will also apply to recoverers who have not yet passed six months from the moment they recovered from the virus.
The new law will last until January 31, 2024 and citizens who choose not to be vaccinated face a maximum fine of 3,600 euros ($ 4,000) per year, provided they are not registered in the vaccine database by the date set for them when the fine is imposed.
At the same time, German Chancellor Olaf Schultz is pushing to approve the immunization law as well, as part of the corona virus' containment strategy in the country.
According to data from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, the rate of vaccinators in Germany and Austria is higher than the EU average and stands at 74% and 72.7% respectively.
At the same time, health officials in the country are still worried about the continued spread of the virus and its various variants.
Germany is the second largest country in terms of population, after Italy.
On January 28, German health minister and epidemiologist Karl Lauterbach warned that the elderly population needed protection because many in these age groups remained unvaccinated.
He added that along with the country's high vaccination rate, there are still four times as many unvaccinated Germans as in Britain and three times as many unvaccinated as in Italy.
Luther Wheeler, head of the German Infectious Diseases Agency at the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), warned that hospitals and intensive care units are starting to fill up again when the number of corona patients in critical condition reached a new high, when only last Friday the state reported a record 248,838 new cases.
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