Austrian Measures against the Novel Coronavirus

More+More+ ♦ Published: February 7, 2020; 10:01 ♦ (Vindobona)

At a press conference at Vienna International Airport (Wien-Schwechat) on the coronavirus, Minister of Health Anschober and Minister of the Interior Nehammer provided information on the measures taken by Austria and the airport as follows..

So far not a single case of coronavirus has occurred in Austria. However, with a total of 28,284 confirmed cases and 565 deaths worldwide to date, this is only a matter of time. / Picture: © Wikimedia Commons / ​English Wikipedia user Graham Beards [CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)]

Minister of Health Anschober, together with Minister of the Interior Nehammer, provided information on the current status of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCov).

Additionally, the further measures against the spread of the virus in Austria were presented.

Until 5 February, 60 samples were tested throughout Austria - all tests gave negative results.

This means that so far not a single case of coronavirus has occurred in Austria.

Measures taken so far against the spread of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCov) in Austria

Adoption of an ordinance introducing an official notification obligation for suspected cases, illnesses and deaths caused by the novel coronavirus (2019-nCov) Amendment of the isolation regulation to allow quarantine measures Daily update of the number of current suspicious cases on the website of the Ministry of Social Affairs Establishment of the coronavirus hotline of the Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES) on 0800 555 621 Current information on the Twitter account of the Ministry of Social Affairs (@bmsgpk)

The following measures were also implemented at Vienna International Airport:

Passengers who currently land in Vienna directly from Beijing are screened in China prior to departure, and the authorities also check whether they have recently been in the crisis region around Wuhan.

If suspicious symptoms are registered in a passenger on board a landing aircraft, the ground staff is informed. The medical staff at Vienna International Airport checks these passengers for any suspected virus.

With immediate effect, travellers arriving by plane directly from China to Austria will be checked with a temperature scanner to detect any illness that may have occurred during the flight from Beijing to Vienna.

In addition, additional multilingual information material (posters, flyers) is available for travellers, which provides information about the coronavirus and rules of conduct.