Yes, Austria Announced Compulsory Nationwide COVID-19 Vaccination

In November 2021, social media posts and news reports claimed that Austria’s federal government had broken new ground in its efforts to limit the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic — reportedly announcing a universal, mandatory vaccination program, to begin in early 2022. 

Those reports were largely accurate, and we are issuing a rating of “True.” In a press conference on the afternoon of Nov. 19, the country’s Federal Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said the major policy shift marked a transition from an approach of attempting to convince and coax vaccine skeptics, to “quickly introducing nationwide mandatory vaccination,” which he said would begin on Feb. 1, 2022.

The press conference (in German) can be watched in full here, and excerpts from it can be read in a federal government news release, here.