On the basis of all the data, Minister of Health Johannes Rauch (Greens) does not yet see a need for a mask requirement – the call to vaccinate and wear a mask continues to exist. A decision must be made on 23 October whether it is not necessary after all. Then the current Corona Measures Regulation will expire.
Is the mask requirement coming or not? The debate about whether this measure should make a comeback has flared up again. Especially due to the announcement by the green club chairman Sigi Maurer that the mask requirement would be introduced after the Hofburg election.
Rauch doesn’t want to “stare” at numbers
Minister of Health Johannes Rauch (Groenen), who has invited an information meeting on Wednesday, sees the situation as relaxed. “Just staring at the incidence and rankings doesn’t help because we have a set of data that is also determinative.” Last Friday, Rauch announced that the situation would be monitored for a few more days due to the increasing numbers of corona – if the current development continues, the point would have been reached “where we need to act”, the minister said at the time.
Infection numbers with lateral development
The situation in the hospitals is evaluated weekly. The occupancy of intensive care beds is currently below the value of the previous year. There has also been a sideways development since Monday, notes Rauch. “The data shows that the patients are not admitted to the hospitals primarily because of Covid,” said Katharina Reich, Director General of Public Health.
However, if hospitals are threatened with massive overload, then there could very well be a mask requirement. But: “There is not one criterion”, the minister emphasized several times, and referred to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the WHO – the “group super careful”.
Still a call to wear a mouth cap and get vaccinated
Herwig Ostermann, General Manager of Health Austria, also tries to calm down. There is a pleasant development “towards a plateau in the number of infections”. However, there are still major uncertainties about the future development of the pandemic, as the question of the seasonality of the infection process will not be answered until the coming weeks.
In this regard, Rauch’s conclusion is: “In certain situations, wear a mask and go for a booster vaccination.”
Source: Krone
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