Institutions for persons with disabilities again the importance of violence prevention, supervision to relieve the staff, and the safeguarding of medical care even in more isolated institutions, and the exploitation of all expedient communication channels. 2.4.2 No clear guidance for institutions and facilities To obtain detailed information on the situation in the individual Laender, the AOB carried out an ex-officio proceeding in summer 2020. A detailed questionnaire was sent to the Laender subject to the NPM monitoring mandate. The objective was to learn which hygiene and protection regulations were recommended for the residential facilities and day-care centres, how the appropriateness of exit and visiting regulations is ensured, which guidelines were applicable in relation to suspected cases and what support was provided to enable the clients to have more contact with their social environment. It called for an improvement in information, in particular for persons who are intellectually challenged. Some complaints from several operator organisations were also taken up, who feared being unable to continue running their operation because of a lack of clarity regarding short-time work regulations or the limited availability of staff due to being in a risk group. The feedback from the Laender showed a wide range of different measures. It became clear that the institutions had been given a large number of nonbinding recommendations but hardly any clear guidelines for preventive concepts and for dealing with suspected cases. Initially, it was not clear to the management and the employees of the institutions how they should proceed in this emergency situation and which standard of due care had to be complied with for infection prevention measures. This is extremely problematic in the view of the NPM. Within the framework of the general duties of protection and due diligence, measures shall be set by both the State and the institutions and facilities for persons with disabilities in order to avert risks to the life and the health of the residents as well as of the customers of partial resident services – while observing human dignity and the right to self-determination. Fundamental rights theory in Austria calls for a situational weighting. In this context, the value of the purpose of the severity of an infringement must be compared with the degree of goal achievement. It is necessary to compare different courses of action with each other and choose the option with the least harm. When authorities or operator organisations simply impose blanket recommendations on care institutions and, in addition, subordinate all other fundamental and human rights to the protection of health, care institutions are inevitably forced into critical dilemmas of a constitutional, liability-related and criminal nature (see Klaushofer et al., “Ausgewählte unions- und verfassungsrechtliche Fragen der österreichischen Maßnahmen zur Eindämmung der Ausbreitung des Covid-19-Virus”, 2020, in Zeitschrift für Öffentliches Recht, volume 75, p. 120). Lack of binding directives 86