The challenge of addressing the lag in vaccination is what ultimately drove French President Emmanuel Macron to mandate the use of vaccine passports earlier this year. In the minds of some, she said, “it just doesn’t feel right the government to impose measures on those who have done everything they can just to protect those who didn’t.”ĭavid Frum: Vaccinated America has had enough “At some point, reality has to hit home: If the health-care system reaches its limits, then additional steps have to be taken eventually,” Eva Schernhammer, the epidemiology-department chair at the Medical University of Vienna, told me. Austria’s neighbors-Germany, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia-have since announced that they will follow suit with tighter restrictions on the unvaccinated. It would also fail to address the fact that the growing strain on the country’s ICUs is largely being driven by unvaccinated patients. To subject everyone to new restrictions (as the government has now been compelled to do, albeit for a time-limited period) would be to risk undermining the incentives that compelled so many people to get vaccinated in the first place. Rather, it was meant to prevent those who have been vaccinated from being “ held hostage” by the unvaccinated minority. To hear Austrian Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg tell it, this week’s drastic intervention wasn’t designed to punish those who aren’t vaccinated. Meanwhile, the country continues to break records for daily reported cases just as intensive-care units in some parts of the country near capacity. Nearly a third of the country, or roughly 2 million people, has opted against getting a jab-resulting in one of the lowest vaccination rates in Western Europe. In Austria, the unvaccinated still make up a sizable proportion of the population. By singling out the unvaccinated, Austria may succeed in increasing its vaccination rate, but it also runs the risk of driving vaccine skepticism even further. The question facing governments in Europe and elsewhere is which approach-carrot versus stick-will prove the most effective.

In Austria, the opposite has now become true: Not only are unvaccinated people (excluding those who have recently recovered from COVID and children under the age of 12) poised to be barred from public spaces even after the national lockdown ends, facing fines of up to 1,450 euros ($1,640) if they fail to comply, but they will soon be subject to legal repercussions if they refuse to get a jab. Under its vaccine-passport system, those who are unvaccinated can still access public spaces if they can provide proof of having recently recovered from a COVID-19 infection, or a negative COVID test. In France, vaccination is strongly encouraged, though not necessarily required. The goal of both models is ultimately the same-to get more people vaccinated-but the differences are key. Yesterday, the Austrian government took it one step further, announcing that restrictions would extend to the rest of the population for a maximum of 20 days starting next week and that vaccination would become obligatory as early as February. Unlike previous national lockdowns, however, this one applied to only a subset of the country: the unvaccinated.

While several countries have followed France’s lead by implementing vaccine passports as a way to encourage people to get vaccinated, others are poised to follow the alternative recently set out by Austria, which this week instructed millions to stay home except for essential activities, such as going to work, grocery shopping, and exercise.

This time, however, European countries are no longer in broad agreement on the best path forward. In time, bolstered by plentiful vaccines, the continent has seen a resumption of near-normalcy: Public-health restrictions have loosened, and travel has restarted.īut as temperatures drop, and as rising cases place Europe back in the epicenter of the pandemic, the continent is once again being forced to grapple with tougher measures in a desperate bid to alleviate pressure on hospitals that are coming under strain. Barring a few exceptions (such as Sweden), countries in the region locked down their economies, keeping people at home in a bid to slow the pace of infection. For a while, during the worst of the pandemic last year, European governments largely seemed to reach a consensus.

Europes covid lockdowns drag on police