COVID 19 In VIENNA, AUSTRIA

Situation In The 21st District Today

The city is under a mild lockdown at the moment. I went out today to go to my bank in my district and I have a encountered a long qeue of people wanting to enter the bank. They´ve posted two security guards to stop flow of people into the bank and made us fall in line and waited for our turn. Most have important issues to clarify at the counter.. Only those who have bank problems were allowed to enter. To retrieve cash, the security men said we can do that via ATM. I was allowed to enter because I have had some remittances to make as well as bills to pay.

We are lucky to have left Spain about a month before, we have a second home there and were supposed to go back to homebase end of February. But because my husband needs medical treatment, we had to cut short our stay in Andalucia by almost 6 weeks... I sure am glad we left beforehand otherwise it would be so difficult to have treatment there in Spain because the hospital is about 60 Km away from us and that is just one way. Besides, now that the virus is spreading in Spain so fast, their government just like in Austria prohibited the flights to and from Spain.

The schools are closed since last week until further notice and they set a temporary date of opening which is sometime middle of April. All shops that have nothing to do with food are closed, some shops or stalls are open but you can only take the food away and not allowed to sit on your chosen table...All coffee shops, book shops and fitness clubs, Hair saloons and many small shops were ordered to be closed. The only ones allowed to open are the gas station, supermarket, and pharmacies and health centers, hospitals. I went to the Apotheke(pharmacy) near our house since I have many prescriptions to order and they asked me to pay in cash instead of credit card. I didn´t ask why but they probably want to get the payment right away in cash instead of waiting for the payment to get thru their bank account.

I can say that the 21st District where I live is like a ghost town, you can only see people running for their errands. The streets are almost empty. At this time of the day and being a Monday, the streets are normally under huge traffic. The government asked private companies to cut short the working hours of their employees. According to the news, there are 1008 infected persons in Austria and most infected area is in Tirol, Vienna has around 122 persons tested positive as of today.

At the moment, there is no panic buying in supermarket, the government has ensured that there are enough food supplies to last for weeks. As far as we are concerned, we have a bit of canned goods, noodles, rice and of course toilet papers....

May this virus be eradicated the soonest possible time. Take

precautions everyone, stay home if you can.

God bless us all!

GIF created by @gremayo
All images are mine and were taken today dd. 16.3.2020