Category: General Interest

Since early March, pharmacies have been offering five free coronavirus self-tests per person per month. The problem, however, is that the tests were out of stock shortly after the promotion started. Even now, they are still hard to come by due to supply issues. But “things are tending to get better,” according to a spokesman for the Austrian Chamber of Pharmacists. Fix seems to be that there should be 3,600 tests this week for each of the 1,400 pharmacies in Austria. The delivery problems and associated delays last week were…

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Last Friday, Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) talked about the distribution of vaccinations in the EU. Individual states would get much more vaccine than others, although this had been pact between the heads of government exactly the other way around. The chancellor said that it had been decided to distribute the vaccine according to the population key, so Austria should have received about two percent of all doses delivered to the EU. In fact, individual countries such as Malta have so far received much more vaccine, others such as Bulgaria…

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Philippine authorities will suspend entry for foreign nationals and returning overseas citizens who are non-Overseas Filipino Workers from 00:01 March 20 until April 19 following an increase in local COVID-19 activity. Exemptions will be in place for 9(c) visa holders and individuals entering due to medical emergencies and humanitarian reasons. Officials continue to enact community quarantine restrictions of various levels nationwide through March 31. The country remains under Code Red Sublevel 2 on its code alert system, indicating ongoing local virus transmission with greater numbers of cases than the government…

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There are currently not only delivery delays for vaccines, but also for the free home tests. Since the beginning of March, a set of five per month should be available in pharmacies. But the tests are out of stock almost everywhere. A look at the ELGA electronic medical record does show a prescription for five coronavirus tests per month. However, it can be difficult to fill this prescription. The pharmacies sometimes take a long time to replenish their supplies: “Sorry, no more free tests in stock today,” is the message…

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Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP) has backed the vaccination panel’s decision to continue using the controversial AstraZeneca vaccine. “We trust our experts here, who have made a clear decision to continue using all approved vaccines,” Kurz said at a press conference in Vienna on Tuesday. Similarly to Health Minister Rudolf Anschober (Greens) earlier, he urged a European solution. “This is a patchwork within Europe, which is not ideal,” Kurz said. Therefore, he hopes “that there will be a clarification of this issue quickly,” the chancellor demanded a “clarification” regarding the vaccine…

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The Ministry of Health is currently working on legal foundations that would give vaccinated people “certain advantages” in the Corona lockdown. “We are currently working on the fact that as a vaccinated person you can also have certain advantages in these first steps with the first groups. That means that certain lockdown measures or similar closures do not have to apply to all groups at the same time,” Health Minister Rudolf Anschober let the bombshell burst in the Puls24 “Citizens’ Forum”. In Israel, people who have already been immunized with…

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Statistically, the coronavirus now “catches” mainly children, young people and working people in Austria. This is confirmed by figures from the Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES) for calendar week ten (March 8 to 14). According to these figures, the average age of those infected is now 37.9 years. At the beginning of the year, the average was 46.7 years, and in mid-April of the previous year it was 56.7 years. If one takes a detailed look at the infection figures in the past week (March 8 to 14),…

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To date, there has been no death linked to coronavirus vaccination, the Federal Agency for Safety in Health Care (BASG) reports in its weekly report. To date, 48 deaths in temporal proximity to a Covid 19 vaccination have been reported to the agency – 46 at BioNTech/Pfizer, one at Moderna and one at AstraZeneca. Eight cases – six at BioNTech/Pfizer, one at Moderna and one at AstraZeneca – are under investigation. In three patients, a link to vaccination could be ruled out based on the autopsy report. In 16 individuals,…

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With around 500 new infections per day and rising hospital numbers in Vienna, virologist Andreas Bergthaler speaks of a tightrope act as far as the incidence of infection is concerned. He can imagine an extension of the Easter vacations to ease the situation. In the “Wien heute” interview, Bergthaler thinks it is a proposal worth considering to extend the Easter vacations to take pressure off. “It would probably cause little harm and fall in a window of time where we expect numbers to be very high right now.” Fundamentally, however,…

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