Austria has been in a pandemic for almost two years. Anyone who believes that the Ministry of Health will one day be able to reliably and timely deliver up-to-date figures will be consistently disappointed to the last. This is remarkable in that right now there are warnings of increasing numbers of infections in the course of Omikron. Unfortunately, we still don’t know how high these numbers are on Saturday.
Some things need to be improved here – but does the Minister of Health also see an urgency? Apparently he is not in such a hurry to make improvements here as he was with the urgently decided vaccination requirement.
On Saturday, the Ministry of Health again did not provide any reliable corona numbers, for the third day in a row. At least the Corona dashboard of the Agency for Health and Food Safety offers a certain orientation – in short: Ages. The new infections from Friday are now there. They amount to 25,103. This is a high value – now the fourth highest – since the start of the pandemic. It would only be helpful to know the number of corona patients and corona deaths, and we don’t get that from the Minister of Health either.
Austria does not know how many people have died in the past few days as a result of a coronavirus infection. The latest figures from the ministry are from Wednesday. But that brings us straight to the next problem: Here the figures from the Ages contradict those from the Ministry of Health. On Wednesday, the ministry had already assumed 13,956 fatalities, the Ages dashboard remained three days later with significantly fewer deaths – namely 13,513.
Ages and the crisis team also provide different figures for hospitalizations. What you can see from the Ages dashboard: Austria is currently experiencing a record high with the seven-day incidence: nationwide there have already been 1767 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants in the past seven days. At the same time, the number of deaths and hospitalization are far from previous record values – see below.
A data breach just during the decision to vaccinate is, to put it politely, embarrassing, so embarrassing that some simply don’t want to see incompetence in it, but method. The data chaos is fueling conspiracy theories. In Vorarlberg, Corona activist Steffen Löhnitz even believes in manipulation. He claims that the numbers were sometimes 60 percent too high.
The fact that there are no exact figures on the vaccination status of those hospitalized – whether vaccinated or not and since when – frustrates statisticians and also fuels conspiracy theories. Other countries did not provide exact figures either. But there were also positive exceptions. Denmark, Great Britain and Israel have been pioneers in providing reliable data during the Corona crisis. Perhaps Austria could learn from these countries, Minister? Better late than never!
If you still want to get an idea despite the chaos: Here are the numbers from Ages.
