“Vaccinated, cured or dead” at the end of winter: Germany expressed its deep concern on Monday at the explosion of COVID-19 contaminations while its Austrian neighbor began a new containment, a unprecedented measure in Europe since the vast vaccination campaign.
But the return of anti-COVID-19 restrictions sparked violence over the weekend in several countries in Europe, which has once again become the epicenter of the pandemic, especially in the Netherlands, where the Prime Minister denounced acts of “pure violence From ‘idiots’.
In a shocking formula, the German Minister of Health, Jens Spahn, warned that “almost everyone will be vaccinated, cured or dead” by “probably the end of winter” due to the spread of the Delta variant ” very, very contagious ”which has been wreaking havoc for several weeks.
While the number of new daily contaminations crossed a record of more than 65,000 last week, Chancellor Angela Merkel also warned of a “highly dramatic situation”.
The current restrictions are “no longer sufficient”, she warned, just four days after having decided with her probable successor Olaf Scholz of severe coercive measures against the unvaccinated.
In Germany as in neighboring Austria, the vaccination rate is below 70%, which is a lower level than in other European countries such as France, where it reaches 75%.
The Austrians, despite a strong grumbling expressed in the streets this weekend, have been confined again since Monday and until December 13.
Shops, restaurants, Christmas markets, concerts and hairdressers have lowered the curtain in Vienna and the rest of the country. But schools remain open, and the streets of the capital were rather busy in the early morning.
“Radical” measures
Since the availability of COVID-19 vaccines to as many people as possible, no country in the European Union has dared to take the plunge.
The former Austrian chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, had declared the pandemic “over”, at least for the vaccinated.
Arrived in October, his successor Alexander Schallenberg “has maintained the fiction for too long” that all was well, comments political scientist Thomas Hofer, interviewed by AFP.
Faced with the surge in cases which have reached unprecedented levels since the start of the pandemic, he had to resolve to “radical” measures that he had however initially excluded.
In addition to this confinement, vaccination of the adult population will thus become compulsory on 1er February 2022, which very few countries in the world have implemented so far.
“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, especially now that we have the vaccine. It’s dramatic, ”says Andreas Schneider, a 31-year-old economist met by AFP in a shopping street in Vienna just after the government’s announcements on Friday.
In Slovakia, where incidence rates are high, restrictions for unvaccinated people were introduced on Monday. “We have opted for strict containment of unvaccinated people, because we have to protect them,” Prime Minister Eduard Heger said.
Non-vaccinated people are therefore no longer allowed to enter non-essential businesses, even with a negative test for the coronavirus.
Massive mobilization
In France, the Prime Minister, Jean Castex, was declared positive for COVID-19 on Monday. This resulted in the quarantine in Belgium of the Prime Minister, Alexander De Croo, who had received him earlier in the day.
Four other members of the Belgian government, who also participated in a Franco-Belgian meeting on Monday morning on the subject of security, “will also take a PCR test and will remain in quarantine until the result of the test is negative”, indicated the government of Belgium.
In several European countries, protests against the toughening of anti-COVID measures continued over the weekend.
For the third night in a row, unrest broke out in the Netherlands on Sunday. Protesters set off fireworks and caused widespread damage in several towns.
These latest demonstrations were, however, less intense than the violence that erupted in Rotterdam on Friday and in The Hague on Saturday.
In Brussels also, clashes punctuated the gathering of some 35,000 demonstrators on Sunday, according to the police. Belgium has announced the generalization of the wearing of masks and also wants to make teleworking compulsory for jobs which allow it.