Category: Feature Stories

Compulsory vaccination against the coronavirus will be suspended. The government decided this in the Council of Ministers on Wednesday. Constitutional Minister Karoline Edtstadler (ÖVP) explained that the duty is not proportionate with the prevailing Omicron variant. A new decision is to be made in three months, as Health Minister Johannes Rauch explained. The basis for the decision is the report of an expert commission. The recommendations contained therein would be implemented “of course, “Edtstadler stressed. The suspension of the obligation is taking place “because many arguments suggest that the encroachment…

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According to a model calculation by the team around simulation researcher Niki Popper, an estimated 77 percent of the population was resistant to infection with the SARS-CoV-2 variant Omicron, which continues to cause very high infection rates. Due to some question marks about the newer Omicron sub-variant BA.2, the estimate refers to the BA.1 type. The immunization rate against Omicron has increased by eleven percentage points compared to the beginning of February. According to the experts of the company dwh, a spin-off of the Vienna University of Technology (TU), this…

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More than two million people have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion. The United Nations reported this in Geneva on Tuesday. According to the UN Organisation for Migration (IOM), a good 100,000 people from third countries were among them. Most of the people had fled to neighboring countries, said a spokeswoman for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). More than half of them, over 1.2 million, were taken in by Poland. UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi stressed that the flow of refugees from Ukraine was not abating. Grandi said that the Balkan…

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It is not infected neurons of the nose that cause the common symptom but damaged neighboring cells. Disturbances of the sense of smell are, in many cases, the leading symptoms of a SARS-CoV-2 infection. Until now, scientists assumed that the cause was damage to the neurons in the epithelial cell layer of the upper respiratory tract. According to US scientists, however, experiments in the laboratory with tissue samples from covid 19 patients and infected hamsters show a different picture: the defects affect supporting cells and only hinder the function of…

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According to data from US Johns Hopkins University, there have already been six million Corona deaths Current data: Since the beginning of the Corona pandemic, more than six million people have died worldwide after being infected with the virus. Hundreds of thousands dead since Omicron According to data from the US Johns Hopkins University (JHU), the university published in Baltimore on Monday. The threshold of five million Corona deaths worldwide exceeded at the beginning of November, the four million mark at July last year. After two years of a pandemic:…

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Pope Francis has again urged a ceasefire, negotiations, and humanitarian corridors in Ukraine. Ukraine: “war,” not “military operation.” In his most detailed statement to date on the Russian attack on the neighboring country, he stressed this Sunday that the arms race could not be called a “military operation” but only a “war.” In doing so, the pope contradicted the official Russian reading of events. “War is madness.” At his Angelus prayer in Rome with thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square, Francis announced that two cardinals of the Curia would…

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According to the United Nations, more than 1.5 million people have already fled the country because of the war in Ukraine. This is the “fastest-growing refugee crisis” in Europe since World War II; the UN said Sunday on the short message service Twitter. With fighting intensifying, the number of people fleeing the country every day is likely to continue to rise. According to UN estimates, four million people may want to leave Ukraine. By the time of the Russian invasion of Ukraine at the end of February, there were just…

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In Austria, the willingness to accept restrictions to fight the pandemic is reducing. This is shown by the latest round of the “Corona Sentiment Barometer” conducted by the Gallup Institute. In it, nearly half of respondents said they thought the threat posed by the coronavirus was exaggerated. Regular Corona mood barometer The Gallup Institute began surveying common public sentiment about the corona crisis before the first lockdown in March 2020. At that time, most people in Austria were still quite relaxed: 53 percent agreed with the statement “that the danger…

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It was already known that previous illness with Covid-19 does not permanently protect against reinfection. Therefore, health authorities in the USA, Europe, and England advise those who have recovered to refresh their immunity. Two recent studies now show a significant decrease in reinfection rates when natural immunity is boosted by a vaccine, the New England Journal of Medicine reports. Israeli epidemiologists evaluated data from 149,032 patients infected during Israel’s first two waves of disease. Of these, 83,356 Israelis had responded to a call from the Ministry of Health and had…

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