“Numbers of COVID infection in Vienna will decrease enormously after Easter“

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For several days, the number of new infections with the coronavirus has been falling in Vienna. Health Councillor Peter Hacker (SPÖ) assumes a “rattling down of the numbers after Easter” for the fall; he calls for a new vaccination campaign.

Since April 1, the new testing strategy has been in effect with the reduction of free Corona tests. There was a peak on the last day of free tests with over 450,000 tests in Vienna, but still fewer infections. In recent days, tests and positive cases are steadily decreasing.

“Without a doubt, the epidemic wave is finally going down, with proper steps,” said Health City Councilor Peter Hacker in ORF’s “Wien Heute” “after Easter, in the second half of April, the steps will be even bigger than. It will decrease.”

Test strategy “successful” for Hacker

Hacker‘s current testing strategy is no different from the previous one: “However, with limited availability of tests. As a city, we have appealed to the federal government several times to extend testing by a month to stay within the old strategy. I still expect that the contagion will be greatly reduced.”

“We wanted to detect waves as early as possible to intervene in there and get people out of contagion chains early. So that the peak is not high but low. In Vienna, we have succeeded in doing this excellently. We can’t prevent waves, but we can push the peak down through measures,” said Hacker.

For example, the stricter Viennese way with mandatory FFP2 masks indoors is valid until April 16. Next week, there will be a meeting with experts; Hacker said, “Then we’ll see how far down we are and the perspective in the next few weeks. Then we’ll decide.”

Positivity rate drops

The so-called positivity rate is crucial to determine whether fewer tests will increase the number of people infected. It indicates what percentage of tests performed in a day was positive. The higher the number, the higher the number of unreported cases.

In the last two weeks, tests performed were relatively constant until the end of March, averaging around 250,000 per day with an outlier on March 26 – positive cases are also falling and rising again.

While the positivity rate in Vienna was just over three percent two weeks ago, it peaked at almost four percent at the end of March. From then on, however, it has been going downhill, and currently, the rate is only 2.85 percent.

The vaccination campaign is “currently at the end.

Hacker sees the vaccination campaign “currently at the end”: “We need a real show of strength, we need completely new ideas, we have agreed on this with the Ministry of Health. Ethical concepts need to be worked out now; we need a high vaccination coverage rate in the fall.”

Discussions are currently underway about the future of the vaccination line at the Austria Center, with the contract expiring at the end of April. “We have to discuss how much focus we put on vaccination streets, how much on physicians in private practice.”

Locations for Corona Vaccinations