Doctor Eva Raunig vaccinates a person with a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine inside a special container to use for general practitioners, called ‘vaccination box’ in Vienna, Austria April 26, 2021. (REUTERS/Lisi Niesner)
VIENNA — Thousands of people took to the streets of Austria’s capital on Saturday to protest against government plans to introduce mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for all next month.
“The government must go!” crowds chanted at one rally in central Vienna in what has become a routine Saturday event.
Parliament is scheduled to vote next week on the issue, which has polarised the country as coronavirus cases surge.
In November, the government announced a fourth national lockdown and said it would make vaccinations compulsory for all Austrians, the first European Union country to do so.
A poll for Profil magazine found 51% of those surveyed oppose making jabs mandatory from February, of whom 34% were against compulsory vaccination in general and 17% wanted to wait. The survey found 45% of Austrians favored compulsory vaccination starting in February.
The poll showed Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s conservatives and the opposition Social Democrats in a dead heat for first place at 25%, followed by the right-wing Freedom Party, a strident critic of government policy, at 20%.
The Greens, junior partner in the coalition, were even with the liberal Neos on 11%, while the vaccine-skeptical MFG party scored 6%.
Health authorities have reported more than 1.4 million infections and nearly 14,000 deaths from COVID-19 since the pandemic broke out in early 2020.