The law, adopted on January 20 by Parliament, was promulgated by the president on Friday, the culmination of a process begun in November in the face of the meteoric spread of the pandemic.

The government has decided to opt for the hard way despite the criticism, standing out from its European partners.

“No other country in Europe is following us on the compulsory vaccine”, denounces Manuel Krautgartner, who has engaged in politics against health rules in Linz (north).

In neighboring Germany, a similar project, championed by the new Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz, began to be debated on January 26 in the Bundestag.

But it has fallen behind amid divisions within the political class.

Checks mid-March

Despite this drastic measure, the vaccination rate has hardly taken off in Austria, still falling below the levels observed in France or Spain - around 70% of the population.

In the vaccination centers of Vienna, the crowd is not there.

"We are far from reaching maximum capacity, things are completely stagnating," Stefanie Kurzweil, of the humanitarian association Arbeiter Samariter Bund, which oversees one of these sites, told AFP a few days before the entry into force of the ban. law.

Coming to receive her third dose to prevent her vaccination certificate from expiring, Melanie, a 23-year-old waitress who did not wish to give her last name, does so without conviction.

Austrian deputies during the vote on the law on compulsory anti-Covid vaccination, January 20, 2022 in Vienna ROLAND SCHLAGER APA / AFP / Archives

"I didn't want to stay locked up at home," she says, while in Austria, non-vaccinated people are excluded from restaurants, sports and cultural venues.

From now on they will also be subject to fines, which she considers "unhealthy".

All adult residents are affected by the text of the law, with the exception of pregnant women, those who contracted the virus less than 180 days ago and finally those who can be exempted for medical reasons.

The checks, however, will not begin until mid-March: sanctions may then be applied, for an amount varying from 600 to 3,600 euros, but they will be lifted if the offender complies within two weeks.

exception in the world

In the queue, others are on the contrary in favor of the injection for all.

"We would have been done for a long time (with the pandemic) if everyone had been vaccinated", plague Angelika Altmann, who works in a notary's office.

More than 60% of Austrians support the measure according to a recent survey, but large swathes of the population remain strongly opposed to it.

For several weeks after the announcement of the project, tens of thousands of people took to the streets to castigate a measure described as radical and draconian.

Critics have also emerged on the meaning of this law in the face of the lesser severity of the Omicron variant and the explosion in the number of cases.

Conservative Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who leads the Alpine country with environmentalists, also announced at the same time a relaxation of health restrictions.

Covid-19: the vaccination obligation in the world Emmanuelle MICHEL AFP

But for the Minister of Health Wolfgang Mückstein, compulsory vaccination aims to protect against "new waves", "to fight against new variants" which could appear in the months to come.

The vaccination pass is required in an increasing number of countries for certain professions or activities, but anti-Covid vaccination for all remains an exception.

In Ecuador, it is compulsory, including for children over the age of five, which is a world first.

Before that, two authoritarian states in Central Asia, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, had mandated vaccination.

Just like Indonesia, even if in fact, less than half of the population is vaccinated.

© 2022 AFP