INTERNATIONAL: A million reasons to get jabbed in Austria. Austria's conservative-led government has announced on Thursday ,January 20, it was introducing a national lottery to encourage holdouts to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, hours before parliament was due to pass a bill introducing a national vaccine mandate.

Austria's lower house of parliament has passed a bill on Thursday making COVID-19 vaccinations compulsory for adults as of February 1, bringing Austria closer to introducing the first such sweeping coronavirus vaccine mandate in the European Union.

Roughly 72% of Austria's population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, one of the lowest rates in western Europe.

New daily infections surged to a new record on Wednesday as the extremely contagious Omicron variant spread further, but the government wants to avoid another national lockdown, since the country has emerged from its fourth one only last month.

Chancellor Karl Nehammer has said that they have earmarked up to one billion euros for the vaccination lottery and he believes it's totally justified to spend that amount of money.

Nehammer has said he wanted there to be a financial reward for those who get vaccinated.

Members of the public, whether already vaccinated or not, would get a ticket for each shot they have had - three tickets in total for those who have had their booster shot.

Every tenth ticket would win a 500 euro or $568 gift voucher, without specifying what the vouchers were for.

The lower house of parliament has passed a bill on Thursday making vaccines compulsory for all adults in Austria, with initial fines of 600 euros, rising to up to 3,600 euros if the fine is challenged unsuccessfully.

Austria will be the first European Union country to introduce a COVID vaccine mandate for all adults when the measure takes effect on February 1.