Will there be a “soft lockdown” in November?

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According to ORF, the government is planning a second lockdown with softer measures.

Is a lockdown coming or not? With new record numbers being set almost daily, this question is becoming more and more pressing. Such rumors have been circulating for weeks. The government has not yet been able to answer them. “I don’t have a crystal ball,” said Economics Minister Margarete Schramböck in a recent interview with KURIER. And Health Minister Rudolf Anschober said on Friday that he had “measures in the drawer”. Which ones, he did not want to say.

On Saturday, the head of domestic policy, Hans Bürger, let the ZiB of the ORF listen attentively. “The government has been tinkering with the most diverse concepts for many weeks and days,” said Bürger.

“And what you hear is that two concepts are crystallizing: a soft lockdown, not the kind we are used to, which could start on November 2. Or even on November 16, the whole thing for two or three weeks.

However, as the KURIER reported, the government is facing a problem with this. Because the current version of the Covid 19 measures law only allows “far-reaching initial restrictions” “to prevent an imminent collapse of medical care or similar emergency situations”.

“If it really escalates, it could lead to a hard lockdown like the one we had in the spring,” says Bürger. But: “Of course it can also be a softer one.

In such a “soft lockdown”, for example, only closing hours in restaurants, for example in Vienna, would be moved forward, or even lower limits for private parties would be set. “There is also a package of measures, but all this has been saved for the day after the Vienna election.