Government to vaccinate three-quarters of the population over 16 by July

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The government plans to offer Corona vaccination to three-quarters of the Austrian population over 16 by early July.

However, this would require more than doubling the number of initial vaccinations.

That’s because last week only 143,189 people received the first dose of their Corona vaccination, according to figures released Monday by the vaccination registry. Overall, 12.7 percent of all Austrians are currently vaccinated – among those over 85, the figure is six out of ten.

A total of 227,576 vaccinations were carried out last week, which is only 770 more than in the previous week. Of those, 143,189 were first-time vaccinations.

However, two and a half times as many first-time vaccinations would be needed to meet the government’s recently proclaimed goal of offering vaccination to at least three-quarters of those over 16 by the end of June.

If the pace of the previous week were to continue, the outstanding 4.6 million vaccinations would not be reached until November. Admittedly, the government expects significantly more vaccine to be available from April onwards, and thus also a faster pace.

So far, the federal and state governments have fallen just short of the goal they declared in February of giving the first sting to 17 percent of the “vaccine-eligible” population by the end of March. Currently, only 15 percent of adults have received the first dose. This puts Austria slightly above the EU average (12.3 percent of adults).

Vaccination coverage is highest among those over 85 years of age (60 percent first and 44 percent second vaccination) and among those aged 75 to 84 (41.7 and 16.5 percent, respectively).

The 65- to 74-year-olds have recently caught up somewhat, but with 13.7 percent “first vaccinations,” they still lag well behind. The province with the lowest vaccination coverage among the oldest population group is still Vienna (49.4 percent), while in Vorarlberg, Tyrol and Styria, two-thirds of the over 85s have already received their first vaccination.