Austria re-enters lockdown as Europe battles Covid-19 surge

VIENNA • Austria returned to a lockdown with the most dramatic Covid-19 restrictions seen in Western Europe for months, after a weekend of violence against virus measures rocked several cities on the continent.

The Alpine nation is also imposing a sweeping vaccine mandate from Feb 1 next year, one of few places in the world to announce such a step so far.

Shops, restaurants and festive markets were shuttered yesterday, while its 8.9 million people are not allowed to leave home save a few exceptions, such as going to work, shopping for essentials and exercising, as virus cases are surging.

Schools and kindergartens remain open, though parents have been asked to keep children at home when possible, despite there being no distance learning offered during the three-week lockdown.

One parent, Ms Kathrin Pauser, said she was still dropping off her daughters, aged nine and 11, both of whom were recently vaccinated, at school. "It's a very confusing situation," she told Agence France-Presse.

The measures come after a weekend of violent clashes in several European cities - including in Belgium and the Netherlands - where tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to protest against Covid-19 measures.

Around 145 people have been arrested in the Netherlands over three days of unrest sparked by a Covid-19 curfew.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte yesterday slammed the "violence under the guise of protest", saying he defends the right to demonstrate peacefully but "will never accept that idiots use pure violence".

In Brussels on Sunday, officers fired water cannon and tear gas at a protest which police said was attended by 35,000.

Protesters set fire to wood pallets, and social media images showed them attacking police vans with street signs.

And in Denmark this weekend, around 1,000 demonstrators protested against government plans to reinstate a Covid-19 pass for civil servants.

"People want to live," said one of the organisers of the Dutch protests, Mr Joost Eras. "That's why we're here."

A crowd of 40,000 marched through the Austrian capital Vienna on Saturday, decrying "dictatorship", while some 6,000 people protested in the city of Linz on Sunday.

The Vienna rally was organised by a far-right political party, and some protesters wore a yellow star saying "not vaccinated", mimicking the Star of David that Nazis forced Jews to wear during the Holocaust.

Alongside the "worried" citizens are others who "are becoming radicalised", Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said on Sunday.

French troops headed to Guadeloupe on Sunday after a week of unrest over Covid-19 measures, while the country's Prime Minister Jean Castex was set to convene a meeting in Paris with officials from the French Caribbean island.

Roads were blocked on Sunday after protesters defying a curfew looted and torched shops and pharmacies overnight. Police made 38 arrests and two members of the security forces were injured.

The violence comes as Covid-19 infections spiral in Europe.

Germany's Health Minister Jens Spahn issued a fresh call yesterday for citizens to get vaccinated.

"Probably by the end of this winter, as is sometimes cynically said, pretty much everyone in Germany will be vaccinated, cured or dead," Mr Spahn said, blaming "the very contagious Delta variant".

Austria's decision flies in the face of earlier promises that tough virus restrictions would be a thing of the past.

Over the summer, then Chancellor Sebastian Kurz had declared the pandemic "over".

But plateauing inoculation rates, record case numbers and a rising death toll have forced the government to walk back such bold claims.

After taking office last month, Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg criticised the "shamefully low" vaccine rate - 66 per cent compared with France's 75 per cent - and banned the unvaccinated from public spaces.

When that proved ineffective in suppressing new infections, he announced a nationwide lockdown, with an evaluation after 10 days.

Political analyst Thomas Hofer blamed Mr Schallenberg for maintaining "the fiction" of a successfully contained pandemic for too long.

"The government didn't take the warnings of a next wave seriously," he told AFP. "The chaos is evident."

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE