By Anna Saischek
Student Correspondent

TYROL, Austria -- After weeks of living in a virtual police state due to the coronavirus pandemic, residents here are relieved that the government has lifted its stringent restrictions. However, they have mixed feelings about the country’s plan to reopen the economy, some saying they are uneasy about returning to work and school in the middle of a pandemic.

Most people were able to go back to work on May 1, and hotels are scheduled to open on May 29. Tourism is one of Austria’s main industries.

“I feel relief more than anything,” said Raffael Huber, a 22-year-old ambulance driver who has been on the frontlines of the crisis. Huber is a resident of Tyrol, a province located in western Austria that borders Italy and is the epicenter of the outbreak in the country.

Data from Worldometer, a provider of global COVID-19 statistics, show that Italy has the third highest number of confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the world.

As of April 29, Tyrol had 3,496 confirmed cases of the coronavirus which is about a fifth of the nation’s total number of cases, according to the Austrian National Ministry of Social Affairs, Health, Care and Consumer Protection.

In an effort to curb the alarming rate of increasing infections in Tyrol, Gov. Guenther Platter issued an executive order on March 18, limiting the mobility of residents in Tyrols’ 279 municipalities, which has a population of 754,705.

The restrictions were similar to those imposed by most states in America, but they were stricter. Residents of Tyrol were prohibited from leaving their homes and town unless they were essential workers or they were helping those in need. And, the police were deployed to patrol the empty streets to ensure everyone was in compliance with the order.

Individuals who had to go to work were required to produce documents to the police to prove they were essential employees, and violators could be fined up to 3,600 EUR which is equivalent to $3,915 in the U.S.

“The measures we have taken are having an impact and we are on the right track," said Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz at a news conference at the Federal Chancellery on April 21. The country’s motto has been: "As much freedom as possible, as much restriction as necessary."

The Austrian Ministry of Social Affairs, Health, Care,and Consumer Protection reported in mid-April that the number of newly infected persons in Austria had sunk below 100, making Austria one of the countries with the most improved rates of preventing new infections, not only in Europe but worldwide.

As of May 1, data from Worldometer also show that Austria had 1,724 infections per one million. This is almost half the number of cases the U.S. reported during the same time period. The U.S. population of about 329 million is sizably larger than Austria’s 8.8 million people.

Worldometer’s data indicate that Austria is ahead in regards to testing, turning out about 9,707 more tests per million.

The austere restrictions took an emotional toll on Huber and other residents of Tyrol. Huber said his girlfriend lives in a different municipality so he could not visit her without risking being penalized, and not being able to see her, his mother or friends made him feel very lonely.

Given the risky nature of his job, Huber also explained that he has to refrain from any type of physical contact with his mother because she has a weak immune system as a result of beating cancer twice, so she is more susceptible to the deadly virus. He has also been separated from his friends, who are hesitant to meet with him for fear of possibly contracting the virus.

“Friends of mine have admitted to me that right now they do not feel comfortable meeting up since I could potentially have been exposed to the virus. Of course, they are all grateful for what I am doing, but the risk to come in contact is too high for them,” said Huber, who helps transfer patients who may be infected in and out of the ambulance when necessary.

Even though Huber is still disconnected from his friends, he said now that the government has lifted its restrictions, he can visit his girlfriend and he feels more optimistic.

“The general sentiment seems to be some sort of confidence because we got to see that our health care system was prepared to deal with the virus. Because of that, there is hope that soon I can meet with my friends and I am immensely overjoyed for that,” Huber said.

Susanne Saischek, the vice-principal and a first grade teacher at the primary school in Götzens, a town in Tyrol, said she and several educators are also relieved that schools will be reopening.

“As of May 18, primary schools can open again and as a teacher that was great news to me,” Saischek said. “It is no secret that especially young students do not benefit as much as their older peers from e-learning. Knowing that we will be back to in-person classes, means that there will be time to catch up on what children had trouble understanding while doing their work at home.”

Saischek added that children of migrants who are taking required remedial classes are disproportionately affected by remote learning, because they often cannot get the support and help they need from their parents, so they risk falling behind in their language skills which will hinder their opportunities for advancement.

Children with special needs as well as those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds are also disproportionately affected by the long-term effects of school closures, Saischek said. She elaborated that many of these children simply do not have the resources to keep up with their peers. Consequently, parents or teachers are compelled to fill in the educational gap.

Officials at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C., said “how student learning will be affected, and how greatly this will affect the poorest and most vulnerable populations remain difficult to say. But we do know that learning will indeed be lost, and that those losses will not likely be evenly distributed.”

Worldwide school closures are impacting over 90 percent of the world’s student population, said UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

“When children lose out on education, they lose out on future opportunities including economic benefits, such as additional earnings, with far-reaching consequences,” researchers at Brookings said.  “Some modeling suggests that the loss of learning during the extraordinary systemic crisis of World War II still had negative impact on former students’ lives some 40 years later. And neither is the impact of lost learning confined to the individual level: For whole societies closing down education today, there will likely be significant consequences tomorrow.”  

Austrian Education Minister Heinz Faßmann announced on April 24 that the nation will be reopening schools in phases, starting on May 4 with high school seniors, who need to complete their comprehensive exams to graduate. The plan is for all of Austria’s 1.37 million students to return to school in split sessions by June 3, he said.

Faßmann noted the plan for reopening schools is contingent upon no significant negative development regarding new infections. “Only if everything goes well and the number of infections does not rise significantly, only then can we open more and more schools,” he said.

Some parents say they are anxious about their children returning to school. 

Anja Koechel, a 28-year-old mother of two children, ages 6 and 7, said she is concerned that schools will be reopening too early and that children will not practice social distancing. “By sending the children back to school the potential for new infections seems high. And should the rise really happen, then we would be back to where we were a month ago -- locked in.

“But I am still sending them to school since there is a definite fear that something is going to be covered in class that I can’t teach my boys myself and I don’t want them to fall behind,” Koechel said.

She added that she is more worried about her elderly mother contracting COVID-19, the deadly disease caused by the novel coronavirus, than her children.

“Older adults are at a significantly increased risk of severe disease following infection from COVID-19,” Dr. Hans Henri Kluge, the World Health Organization’s regional director for Europe, said in a statement.

According to the WHO website, “older people, and those with underlying medical problems like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease, and cancer are more likely to develop serious illness” from COVID-19.  

Although evidence to date suggests children and young adults are less likely to develop severe disease if they contract the virus, WHO researchers caution that “children and adolescents are just as likely to become infected as any other age group and can spread the disease.”

As part of the high-risk group, 65-year-old Brigitte Mariacher, another resident of Tyrol, said she is happy the government lifted its harsh restrictions because being confined to her home made her feel like a “caged animal,” but she is nervous about the planned reopening.

“It makes me a little uncomfortable to think that suddenly everyone will want to go out at once. My partner and I actively try to avoid people by going on our bike rides early in the morning before everyone else and letting others handle our grocery shopping. We know that not everyone is taking the same amount of care and consideration, but that is why we are exercising our self-responsibility,” Mariacher said.

Mariacher pointed out that one of the positive things that has come out of the quarantine has been a renewed sense of community spirit. She said several residents have assisted her and other senior citizens by going to the grocery store for them to reduce their exposure to the virus. “Our community has come together beautifully and to have so many people to count on in such difficult times is definitely a good feeling.”

Editor’s note: These interviews were conducted in German and translated into English by the reporter, a native speaker.

This story was produced by MCIR's Journalism Lab at Millsaps College, part of a public service project initiated by Report for American and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, nonprofit news organizations dedicated to community journalism and empowering Mississippians in their communities through the use of investigative journalism. MCIR Investigative Reporter and Report for America corps member Shirley L. Smith is the lab instructor.

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