Austria’s lower house of parliament passed a bill on Thursday making COVID-19 vaccinations compulsory for adults as of February 1. This new law brings Austria closer to introducing the first such sweeping coronavirus vaccine mandate in the European Union. Faced with a stubbornly high number of vaccine holdouts and a surge in infections, the government had said in November that it is going to mandate vaccination. Since then it has raised the age as of which the mandate will apply, to 18 from 14.