After lifting of Covid restrictions, spring fervour grips Austrian nightclubs

According to the Ministry of Health, vaccine mandate has had little effect on the vaccination rate

After the Austrian government decided to lift most anti-Covid measures, last weekend saw citizens flocking to restaurants, bars and clubs across the country in what some club-owners have described as spring fever. People no longer need any type of health pass to enter crowded venues and, on top of that, the curfew has also gone away.

According to the ORF, the Austrian national broadcasting agency, Klaus Friedl, chairman of the gastronomy section of the Styrian Chamber of Commerce, explained that the sector is seeing a full spring awakening. He also explained that the catering industry hopes that will see a full recovery by mid-2023.

This, however, creates a contradiction with Austria’s mandatory Covid-shot policy and a situation where it will be very hard to enforce it. Notably, in the past, authorities used pandemic restrictions and the Green Certificate as a way to distinguish the unvaccinated. With measures going away that will become much harder.

At the same time, according to the Ministry of Health, the mandate has had very little effect on vaccination rates and there are a million adults in the country, who are subject to a fine. Now, the government is set to decide whether to drop portions of the mandate.

Cautious loosening in Vienna

While pandemic restrictions in Austria were lifted on the federal level, the states still have some autonomy when implementing the measure on the local level. Most notably, authorities in Vienna have decided that a full lift on mask, vaccine and recovery rules would be a premature decision for the city.

Nevertheless, last weekend thousands of people waited for hours in sub-zero temperatures to be the first to enter nightclubs. At the same time, Vienna mayor Michael Ludwig explained that Covid-infections were still too high to introduce a blanket loosening of pandemic measures, as the ORF reported.

Consequently, people going to restaurants, bars and nightclubs will have to provide a valid vaccination or recovery certificate and masks will still be mandatory in retail. At the same time, many Viennese decided to go and party in the neighbouring federal state of Lower Austria.

What does this mean for the Austrian vaccine mandate?

Notably, Austria is the only country to have introduced a vaccine mandate for COVID-19. However, since the mandate came into force, in February, according to the Ministry of Health, vaccination numbers have not changed significantly.

At the start of last month, there were 1.3 million adults without a valid Green Certificate in Austria, meaning that they were not vaccinated or recovered. Now that number has dropped to 972,289, however, most of that drop is due to the 404,000 people who have had the disease in that period. According to government data, only 60,765 people have had their jab.

On 8 March, the government-appointed commission to evaluate compulsory vaccination is scheduled to present its first report. Lawmakers will use that to decide whether violations will be sanctioned from mid-March.