The Austrian Government announced today that, as of May 1, it will reopen all economic activities in Austria, with the exception of large-scale cultural and sporting events, which will remain suspended due to the covid-19 pandemic.
According to the plan presented today in Vienna by the Austrian executive, made up of Christian Democrats and ecologists, it also foresees the opening of schools, “gradually”, from mid-May and the details of which will be advanced next Friday.
The gradual return of classes will coincide with the opening, on May 15, of restaurants and other gastronomic places, but always bearing in mind the requirement of physical distance between people, as well as churches and other communities of worship.
Austria has been in the first phase of the “end of confinement” since last week with the opening of small shops and large DIY and gardening areas.
“We are studying the data, although we are not yet aware of the effect of Holy Week and the opening of small businesses,” acknowledged the Austrian Federal Chancellor, conservative Sebastian Kurz.
All services, he continued, will be able to resume activities, but the rules of hygiene and physical distance must always be respected.
Last week, the Austrian authorities underlined that, as of May 1, all outdoor sports facilities, such as tennis courts, athletics or golf, would be opened.
The remaining sports activities in covered pavilions, including gymnasiums, will remain closed, while all cultural and social events with the public will remain suspended until at least 31 August.
At a professional level, sportsmen can, since the beginning of the week, train in small groups, as is the case with the football teams of the main Austrian championship, whose league may start again, without an audience, in the coming weeks.
To date, Austria has recorded 14,873 confirmed cases with the new coronavirus, which have caused 481 deaths.
In the last 24 hours, the Austrian health authorities have detected 78 new positive cases, a number that maintains the trend of less than a hundred new infections registered in the last three days.
Globally, according to an AFP report, the covid-19 pandemic has already caused more than 170,000 deaths and infected almost 2.5 million people in 193 countries and territories. More than 558,000 patients were considered cured.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December in Wuhan, a city in central China.
To combat the pandemic, governments sent 4.5 billion people home (more than half the world’s population), ended non-essential trade and drastically reduced air traffic, paralyzing entire sectors of the world economy.
Faced with a decrease in new patients in intensive care and contagion, some countries, such as Austria, have meanwhile started to develop plans to reduce confinement and in some cases, such as Denmark, Spain or Germany, to relieve some of the measures .
– .
