Vienna and nearby regions to close non-essential shops over Easter - media

VIENNA: Vienna and two other provinces in eastern Austria will close non-essential shops for several days over Easter in a bid to ease the growing strain on intensive care wards from rising coronavirus infections, Austrian media reported on Wednesday.

The three provinces - Vienna and the province surrounding it, Lower Austria, as well as Burgenland, which borders Hungary - have been working on tighter restrictions with the Health Ministry after the conservative-led government decided on Monday the rest of the country's curbs would remain unchanged. Of Austria's nine provinces, those three are among the hardest-hit and have high levels of the more contagious British variant of the coronavirus, which has been causing severe cases faster and often required longer hospital stays.