Measures against omicron to be determined on Thursday, 6 January

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The expert panel “Gecko” prepared facts and figures before the federal-provincial summit today, Thursday. The government will eventually announce the concrete measures based on the presentation of the Covid Crisis Coordination. A “hard lockdown” is apparently not an issue.

Calls for quarantine relaxations
At 11 a.m. Thursday, the federal government will consult with the states and experts on the current Corona situation. The “all-state Covid Crisis Coordination” (Gecko) did not make any specific recommendations for concrete measures at its meeting on Tuesday afternoon, according to information obtained by APA. Accordingly, the expert panel prepared figures, data and facts and made assessments as a substantive basis for policy decisions.

Three kings bring press conference
The federal government wants to decide on Thursday from 11 o’clock with the state governors and the Gecko – the Director General for Public Health, Katharina Reich and Major General Rudolf Striedinger – in view of the rapidly growing Omicron wave on further measures. The top government officials, Reich and Striedinger will be on hand at the Chancellor’s Office, with state governors and other experts joining them via video. The meeting is scheduled to last until 1 p.m., after which there will be a press conference.

At the Gecko meeting on the previous day, the questions posed by the federal government and the contents of the topic groups were worked through, as APA has learned. There were reports, for example, on the Omicron variant, testing, and quarantine rules related to critical infrastructure.

Tough lockdown apparently “not an issue”
According to information from APA, a new hard lockdown is not likely to be an issue at today’s summit. Rather, it should be about a change in the quarantine rules for contact persons. Recently, in view of the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, calls for a relaxation of the quarantine rules have increased from the federal states and the chamber of commerce, and epidemiologist Gerald Gartlehner has also spoken out in favor of this. The argument is that otherwise there is a danger that the entire country will come to a standstill.

Adjustment of quarantine rules demanded
The nine regional medical association presidents demanded on Wednesday in a dispatch likewise a fast adjustment of the quarantine rules. Triple-vaccinated people should be considered K2 contacts, and in addition, an imposed quarantine should end after five days if there are no symptoms, they said. Many data showing good vaccine protection for triply vaccinated people with the Omicron variant, as well as a generally slightly lower risk of a severe course, would make these adjustments defensible.

Walking a tightrope between relaxations and lockdowns
It is clear that relaxing quarantine rules involves walking a certain tightrope, physician representatives said. But there is no other realistic route, they said: “Otherwise, we’ll soon be facing another lockdown – but this time not because there’s no alternative medically or epidemiologically, but because too many people will have to stay in quarantine at the same time, causing public life to collapse.” Keeping your distance, hand hygiene, and especially wearing FFP2 masks indoors are “of paramount importance” with the more infectious omicron variant, the physician representatives also reminded.