Curbing coronavirus isn’t rocket science. A 10-step action plan for Austria.

Madrid is entering a second lockdown. For the next two weeks, residents won’t be let out of the city.

Paris is closing its bars from tomorrow as it warns of a potential second lockdown.

Moscow and other Russian regions will move schools entirely online after school holidays end mid-October. Moscow’s mayor showcased today makeshift coronavirus wards in expo centres and ice-skating rinks. The city’s hospitals are full.

Sweden has noticed a doubling of coronavirus detected in Stockholm’s water.

Italy is proposing mandatory masks in all outdoor spaces, in addition to its comprehensive indoor-mask policy which it has had for some time. Anschober just said he doesn’t think this is necessary. Hmm. Italy’s indoor mask rule has probably done more than any other measure in helping Italy remain in a good place compared to alarming increases in coronavirus infections across many other EU countries. Italy also recently adopted a huge program to bring rapid tests to the country’s schools.

So what has Austria done? The answer is, sadly, very little. That’s the bad news. Vienna hit a positivity rate of an alarming 10.6% in the past 24 hours, a shocking figure that should be sending off all sorts of alarm bells if it wasn’t for the mayoral election this coming Sunday.

The good news is that there are measures which can be easily adopted which will really help curb the spread of the virus. According to the latest Ampel data, only 50% of new cases in Vienna can be traced to known “clusters”. This means the remaining 50% are community spread. Almost 1 in 5 new infections were aged 0–19. Yet official policy is to only test children (of any age, including teens) if they show symptoms after having had contact with someone who tested positive.

I know this firsthand. My daughter was a K1 contact person after one of her teachers tested positive. The class was sent to quarantine for 10 days; no tests were offered by the city of Vienna. The school director suggested that we test privately (€140, results in 6 hours — hardly an expense most families can afford on a regular basis) for peace of mind. We did. It was, thankfully, negative.

The class still sat out their quarantine. Online school worked smoothly. No one ever called us or checked to see if she was actually quarantining. My other children were instructed that they must still attend school in-person. I’ve learned not to look for logic in the guidance we are given by the authorities. I asked my kids to wear their masks in their classrooms. Five classes in their school have been in quarantine since school began one month ago.

Case loads have been creeping upwards in Austria, yet there has been no real action to deal with the problem, as if the government hopes that the problem will somehow miraculously go away. There have been calls for more rapid tests, which is great, but if the White House fiasco taught us one thing, it is that testing alone doesn’t solve this problem. The news just broke that one of Kurz’s own employees just tested positive. Perhaps a timely wake-up call.

We need to reduce the number of people sharing indoor air together, we need to stop the hugging, kissing and hand-shaking, and if we must share indoor air, we need to mask up. All of us, even kids.

It is lovely that the health minister enjoyed a sunny hike with his cute dog in Vienna yesterday. I wish, though, he might have also put together a to-do list. I’ve put one together for him. 10 things you can do now to stop the spread of coronavirus.

I’ve given up on the education minister, who gave a TV interview yesterday and managed — to my utter amazement — to talk about schools and coronavirus without mentioning masks once. I wrote him an open letter a month ago, when school just opened. Never got a reply.

So I think its time for the government, and namely, the health ministry to step up and start leading.

Here are 10 things Austria can do now to stop the spread of coronavirus:

1. Masks in ALL indoor spaces. This means: classrooms, workplaces, offices, theatres (yes, even while seated), shops, museums. If you are inside a building or an enclosed space that isn’t your own home, you need to have a mask on. Yes, children too.
2. Reduce the number of people sharing indoor air.

This means: move older children and teens (AHS/NMS) to online school. We know it from the lockdown, it worked just fine. Children are remarkably resilient. We also know that children transmit the virus just like adults. Keeping them in classrooms without masks is downright reckless and dangerous for teachers, students and school staff.

Encourage as many people as possible to work from home and motivate employers to allow this. This is a real cultural hurdle in Austria, but with today’s technology, there is no excuse for in-person meetings. The government has been showcasing what not to do in its own meetings; it should evaluate its own behaviour (I wrote this before the Kurz news broke).

Perhaps that in-person Elternabend could be replaced by email or Zoom given that we are in the middle of a global pandemic?

3. Close the bars. Sitting down and drinking isn’t any different from standing up and drinking. The virus can spread in both cases. Drunk people share air and don’t keep distance. There really isn’t any reason for anyone to be celebrating anything indoors with a bunch of friends right now. Social distance also means physical distance.

4. Close the gyms. Austria is a a beautiful country. Let people exercise outside. No indoor weight rooms, treadmills, dance studios, saunas, yoga, pilates — indoor sweating and breathing isn’t safe, and we all understand that people are unlikely to workout with masks on.

5. Convey the message that indoor dining is risky. It would be painful for the economy, but the only kind of restaurant dining any of us should be doing at the moment is either outdoors or take away.

6. Theaters, cinemas, museums — if you want to keep them open (understandably), masks need to be worn at all times, even when people are seated. Aerosol transmission is real and simply creating space between audience members does not protect against this.

7. Test asymptomatic people of all ages. A lot has been written about testing failures, I don’t need to rehash them now. 1450 is still turning people away for tests. This cannot happen. Children must be tested if exposed, even if they display no symptoms. With community spread rampant, and 10.6% positivity rate in Vienna, you simply cannot afford not to test as many people as possible. Prioritize schools, especially teachers, healthcare workers, large employers, anywhere people have to work in close proximity due to the nature of their jobs. An interesting experiment would be to pick any school (AHS/NMS) in Vienna and gargle test everyone: students, teachers and staff. I wager the results would be shocking.

8. Plastic face shields, visors, and mouth guards are not masks. They serve no scientific or medical purpose and their wearers can spread the virus further. Ban them immediately.

9. Make single-use masks freely available in grocery stores and on public transport. Do not underestimate the expense of keeping a family “masked up”! If compliance is high, even the thin blue surgical masks will protect us all just fine.

10. Model good behavior yourselves. The White House and GOP do not have a copyright on stupidity. Do not meet in indoor spaces without appropriate masks and distance. Send as many of your own employees to work from home as possible. Start talking now about the fact that Christmas this year will be like no other. Give hope: vaccine development is promising. But be honest: it is going to get worse before it gets better. Together, we can and must slow the spread.

Finally, a word about jobs and the economy. You will not fix the economy/tourism if you don’t fix the public health emergency.

A little example. Two of my kids played in a golf tournament yesterday. Many children from Germany were originally signed up to play. This would have brought hotel revenues and entire families to Vienna for the weekend. They all had to cancel due to Germany’s travel warning for Vienna.

Don’t fool yourselves. There isn’t a country on earth that ignored the virus and benefitted economically from doing so. The residents of Austria deserve straight talk and real, productive actions.

A last note for those who want to learn more. I believe the most powerful messages about the seriousness of and the dangers presented by Sars-cov-2 can be found in the testimonials of those in Austria who have been ill with covid-19. Here are a selection of stores, I highlight recommend taking the time to watch/read them: