Austria has moved closer to imposing a full lock-down on the unvaccinated after those who haven’t had the jab were banned from entering a long list of public spaces.
“The entry ban will come into effect next week and will apply to cafes, bars, restaurants, theaters, ski lodges, hotels, hairdressers and any event involving more than 25 people,” reports RT.
The measures will impact the 36 per cent of residents who haven’t been fully immunized and have been introduced in response to rising COVID cases.
“The evolution is exceptional and the occupies of intensive-care beds are increasing significantly faster than we had expected,” said Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg.
After providing a four week buffer period for those who have received one dose of the vaccine and can provide a negative PCR test, the option to provide a negative test will be removed.
The government has put a limit on the occupancy of intensive care units which, if breached, will trigger lock-down measures being imposed solely on the unvaccinated.
Once the number reaches 600, or one third of total capacity, the new rules will be triggered. That number now stands at 352 but is rising by 10 per day.
Such measures will extend beyond vaccine passports, mandating that people who are unjabbed stay at home and only leave for “essential” reasons such as buying food.
This will probably be enforced in a similar way to how the first lock-down was enforced, with police performing spot checks on people asking if they have permission to be outside.
Austria would be the first major country to exclusively impose ‘stay at home’ measures on the unvaccinated, but it could eventually be replicated elsewhere, despite the waning immunity that the vaccine itself offers.
Of all the extreme measures carried out by various states in Australia, the collections and confiscations by the State Penalty and Enforcement Register (SPER) might just be the icing on the cake.
During the lengthy COVID lockdown in the state of Queensland, Australia (Brisbane area), most workers were not permitted to work or earn a living.
Several states stepped in to provide wage subsidies so people could purchase essential products and pay their living expenses. However, during the lockdown if you were caught violating any of the lockdown rules, you were subject to a civil citation, a fine or ticket for your COVID violation.
Get caught too far from home, outside your permitted bubble, and you get a ticket. Get caught spending more than the permitted 1 hour outside, get a ticket. Get caught without a mask, even by yourself – and yep, ticket. Enter a closed quarantine zone (park, venue, etc.) and you get a ticket. Tickets were being handed out by police on the street as well as during random checkpoints on the roadways.
Additionally, people returning to Queensland were put into a system of involuntary quarantine. The costs for that quarantine, mostly hotel rooms, were to be paid by the people being involuntarily captive and not allowed home.
Citizens were required to have their physical location scanned via a QR code on their phone. These checkpoints were to assist in controlling the COVID spread and were used for contact tracing throughout the past two years. However, the checkpoints and gateway compliance scans also registered your physical location; the consequence was an increased ability for police and COVID compliance officers to catch people violating the COVID rules. Ex: If you checked in at the grocery store, they knew how far from home you are, and the police could figure out if you violated your one hour of time outside the home at the next checkpoint.
The result of all this compliance monitoring was thousands of fines, civil citations for violating COVID rules. Thousands of people given thousands of fines that would need to be paid.
Now the state is requiring all of those civil citations get paid, or else. And the enforcement actions to collect these fines from the State Penalty and Enforcement Register are quite extreme. Citizens who have outstanding tickets are finding their driver’s licenses suspended; bank accounts are being frozen and seized; homes and property are are being confiscated, as well as business licenses suspended for outstanding citations.
“Queenslanders who received fines for breaking Covid-19 rules risk having their homes seized and bank accounts frozen in a government crackdown to collect $5.2 million in repayments.” (LINK)
Brisbane Times – “SPER was undertaking “active enforcement” on another 18.4 per cent of fines, worth about $1 million, which a spokesman said “may include garnishing bank accounts or wages, registering charges over property, or suspending driver licences”. The remaining 25.2 per cent of fines were either under investigation or still open to payment without further action being taken.
Outside SPER’s work, Queensland Health took the unusual step of calling in private debt collectors to chase up $5.7 million amounting from 2045 significantly overdue invoices for hotel quarantine. (read more)
