Category: Feature Stories

In view of the new Sars-CoV-2 variant, three questions are currently burning: How contagious is omicron? And how good is the immune protection of the vaccinated and recovered? Does the new variant cause more severe disease than Delta? A good month after the first reports, there are already some answers, from South Africa as well as from European countries. How fast is Omicron spreading?Still rapidly. In South Africa, by the beginning of December, Omicron had marginalized the previously dominant Delta variant within two weeks. In Denmark and the UK, there…

Read More

The omicron wave is rolling: some countries have already reacted with strict measures such as the closure of stores and leisure facilities. Travel is also becoming much more difficult. However, countries are affected differently by the Corona pandemic – and the rules in the fight against Covid-19 are also very different: Germany: after being removed from the list of high-risk countries, entry from Austria is now possible upon presentation of 3G proof – vaccinated, recovered, tested. The proof requirement applies from the age of six. Switzerland: everyone – including vaccinated…

Read More

The Google Austria Year in Review 2021 shows what Austrians typed into the Google search engine particularly often this year. According to the report, users were particularly interested in the European soccer championship – “EM” displaced “Corona” in second place among the top search terms. “Corona continued to dominate search queries this year like no other topic,” said Wolfgang Fasching-Kapfenberger, press spokesman for Google Austria. Corona, lockdown, everything gurgles and Corona numbers occupied the AustriansGoogle provides in its evaluation with the “trending searches” the search terms that have risen the…

Read More

More than 277.09 million people worldwide have been confirmed to have contracted coronavirus by the end of December That’s according to a Reuters count based on official data. More than 5.67 million people have died with or from the virus since it was first detected in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. U.S. has highest coronavirus infection numbersThe United States has the highest infection numbers, followed by India, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and Russia. The USA also has the highest number of deaths. Brazil, Russia, India and Mexico are next in…

Read More

In view of the division in society that has become visible above all as a result of the Corona crisis, Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen and Vienna Archbishop Cardinal Christoph Schönborn emphasized “what we have in common” at Christmas. In the ORF program “Licht ins Dunkel,” both appealed to focus on togetherness.“It’s Christmas, that’s when you make an effort to leave what divides you at the door,” Van der Bellen said. He said he envied no politician, especially in the pandemic, having to make decisions every day without knowing…

Read More

According to data from U.S. pharmaceutical company Novavax, the vaccine Nuvaxovid should provide effective protection against Omikron. Astrazeneca, meanwhile, pointed to a study suggesting that booster vaccination with the vaccine works well against the coronavirus variant. Novavax reported in a release an effective immune response – also against the delta variant. A third dose – a so-called booster – would increase this immune response even more, showed the first results of a study on the vaccine’s efficacy in adolescents and as a booster. The immune response was as much as…

Read More

The world’s population has grown by 82 million people this year, according to data from the United Nations (UN). This means that on the night of January 1, 2022, there will be around 7.92 billion people living on Earth, according to the German Foundation for World Population (DSW). According to the data, the world’s population is currently growing by around 1.09 percent every year, while between 1965 and 1970 the annual increase was still 2.05 percent. A new UN forecast on global population growth is expected in early 2022, said…

Read More

Numbers are still declining, but because of the Omicron variant, there could be 15,000 new infections in Austria as early as the first week of January. This is what experts fear. Reproduction numbers are already likely to have increased significantly. The highly infectious Omicron variant of the coronavirus could fully capture Austria as early as the first week of January and then sweep through the country as a fifth corona wave with 15,000 new infections per day. This outlook was published by the Covid forecasting consortium on Wednesday afternoon as…

Read More

Austria is once again making its Corona rules stricter. The closing time in restaurants will be brought forward to 10 p.m. starting Dec. 27. The maximum number of participants at events will be limited to 2,000, and that too with conditions. From variant states like Great Britain one can enter only with third sting without quarantine. Bringing forward of gastro curfew also on New Year’s EveFor the first time, these measures were no longer announced by the government, which met together with the provincial governors, but by the Director General…

Read More