Easter lockdown for Eastern Austria

Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland will be in lockdown from 1 to 6 April

Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland will go into a short lockdown at Easter. This was announced yesterday at a press conference by the Mayor of Vienna Michael Ludwig (SPÖ), Minister of Health Rudolf Anschober (Greens), Governor of Lower Austria Johanna Mikl-Leitner (ÖVP) and Governor of Burgenland Hans Peter Doskozil (SPÖ).

What will the measures include?

• Restrictions on leaving one's home from April 1 to April 6 will be implemented. Exceptions are only permitted for essential and immediate purposes.
• Hairdressers and beauty salons, as well as other facilities, whose services include body contact, will be required to close.
• Closure of stores, except for shops with necessities such as food products and pharmacies. On April 7, after the opening of the retail network, the stores can be entered after a test.
• Mandatory wearing of FFP-2 masks, including outdoors, when there is a crowd of people. Wearing a mask inside is mandatory.
• Mandatory coronavirus testing of employees once a week.
• Switching to home working wherever possible.
• Distance learning in schools after the Easter holidays until April 9.
• Control twice a week of daily arrivals from neighbouring countries.

“We are ready to take responsibility as state leaders of the eastern region in a very difficult situation. We put together a package that is very efficient. If there are no results in a timely manner, we will also have to take additional measures. Based on the information from the experts, we can decide that depending on the numbers,” confirmed Mayor Ludwig on his official page on Facebook.

The measures are now more severe than initially expected because of the new mutation of the virus. The “British” virus is particularly contagious and the high number of CoV-infected people in the eastern region of Austria requires new immediate measures.