The Austrian government, which is stepping up shock measures to try to contain the surge in cases of coronavirus infection hitting the country, intends to make vaccination against COVID-19 compulsory.
The decision, a precedent for Europe, comes as the continent grapples with a new wave that is forcing many states to urgently tighten health controls.
PHOTO GEORG HOCHMUTH, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE ARCHIVES
Alexander Schallenberg, Federal Chancellor of Austria
Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg announced on Friday that Austria would adopt from dug 1er next February a coercive approach providing for fines for recalcitrant since too large a fraction of the population refuses to be vaccinated.
The country of nine million inhabitants, which recorded more than 15,000 cases of infection during the day, has, at 64%, one of the lowest vaccination rates in Western Europe.
“Substantially increasing the vaccination rate is the only avenue to get out of the vicious circle in which we are caught … Too many people have lacked solidarity through their behavior,” said the Chancellor, who also announced a new period of general confinement in front of extend at least until mid-December.
He said people who still have not been vaccinated by that date would remain under confinement.
The trial of the courts
The toughening of the government’s approach has sparked criticism from the opposition ranks, especially from the far right, an elected official quoted by the British daily Tea Guardian criticizing the country’s transformation into a “dictatorship”.
Demonstrations are planned for this Saturday in Vienna to denounce the decision, which is unlikely to be overturned by the courts according to Alan Greene, a specialist in constitutional law and human rights attached to the University of Birmingham, in the United Kingdom. United.
In interview with Press, the analyst said Friday that the European Court of Human Rights was unlikely to rule against the Austrian government despite the binding nature of the measure adopted.
Since the start of the pandemic, the tribunal has adopted a very little interventionist approach, leaving States a “wide margin of appreciation” to determine “the balance to be found between respect for individual rights and the defense of the collective good”, he notes.
In a decision made before the start of the pandemic that affected the Czech Republic, the court ruled, the academic notes, that requiring children to be vaccinated against nine diseases before entering kindergarten did not represent a disproportionate “interference with liberty” since the objective was to protect the health of others.
Austria, notes Mr. Greene, could be required to show that it has opted for compulsory vaccination for a “proportionate” measure which minimizes the infringement of individual rights by providing in particular for exceptions, for example for those who cannot. be vaccinated for medical reasons.
Imposing separate containment measures on vaccinated and unvaccinated people may be viewed in the same way, believes the University of Birmingham specialist. Other states, such as Slovakia, have indicated that they also intend to adopt this approach.
Austria’s decision on compulsory vaccination aroused reservations on Friday from the World Health Organization (WHO), which said it favored strategies aimed at convincing the population rather than forcing it.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights also stressed to Agence France-Presse that an “educational” approach should be prioritized.
Currently, only a handful of countries officially mandate COVID-19 vaccination. This is particularly the case for Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, which are subject to authoritarian regimes, as well as for Indonesia. None, however, has a very high effective vaccination rate.
An “extreme”
A large number of Western countries have imposed compulsory vaccination on certain professional bodies, particularly in the health sector, but none has yet shown its willingness to follow Austria’s lead by targeting the entire population.
Even if it is controversial, the imposition of compulsory vaccination on part or all of the population is defended by a growing number of bioethicists, notes Vardit Ravitsky, who teaches in this field at the School of Public Health. from the University of Montreal.
The answers that specialists give to the ethical questions raised by the COVID-19 pandemic have evolved significantly as scientific knowledge about the virus has grown, she says.
The importance of the risks posed by the virus to affected countries, in particular through its potential impact on their health system, the appearance of more transmissible variants and the effectiveness of vaccines have transformed the analysis, underlines Mr.me Ravitsky.
The imposition of restrictions on unvaccinated people, in particular through a vaccination passport, is now seen as a justifiable approach by elected officials in many countries.
The acceptability of such measures from an ethical point of view, however, depends on the severity of the restrictions imposed, believes the professor from the University of Montreal, who considers the coercive approach chosen by Austria in terms of vaccination as an “extreme”.
The debate on this subject is likely to intensify in Europe, which brings together nine of the ten countries that recorded the largest acceleration in the number of COVID-19 cases this week. Only the United States showed a comparable increase. The other regions of the planet have experienced a relative improvement, according to a census carried out by Agence France-Presse.
WHO believes that the deterioration of the situation in Europe is attributable to an insufficient overall vaccination rate, the too rapid lifting of health restrictions and the progression of the Delta variant.