Retirement and nursing homes rectives. Both the staff and residents also criticised having to wait several days for the results of PCR tests in suspected cases. Just three of the recommendations made in July 2020 are repeated here, as they are still relevant in the view of the commissions. Some of the recommendations were already followed in the year under review. At the expense of the Federal Government, 100,000 doses of vaccine for the seasonal influenza were procured specially for the residents of nursing homes as a precautionary measure and administered free of charge. X The nationwide availability of telemedicine programmes such as video consultation hours or telemonitoring facilitate the medical and therapeutic care of residents in care facilities and should be integrated into regular care. X The range of tasks for the fully trained higher service should be expanded such that more medical tasks reserved for doctors can be performed by qualified care staff without a doctor’s prescription in the future. X Government agencies shall supply care facilities with sufficient PPE in emergencies during catastrophes. These should be able to rely on quickly getting the required support, be it technical, procedural or personnel. 2.1.3 Requirements of COVID-19 prevention concepts from a human rights perspective Most of the residents of homes are much older than 80 years of age, often have multiple diagnoses, and over half of them are suffering from dementia. Cramped conditions coupled with close physical contact with different caregivers generally pose an increased risk of the rapid spread of infectious diseases. In view of the risk of life-threatening complications after SARSCoV-2 infections, the compatibility of increased virus prevention with the fundamental and human rights of the residents was a core issue for the NPM. The foundations for evidence-based, legally responsible and coordinated action were anything but clear early on. Figures from the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety (Agentur für Gesundheit und Ernährungssicherheit) and the Austrian National Public Health Institute (Gesundheit Österreich GmbH) indicate that during the first wave in spring 2020 0.3% of all residents of nursing homes died of or with COVID-19. In line with the considerably higher number of infections in the general population, during roughly the ten times stronger second wave in the autumn, both the number of infections and deaths in nursing homes rose sharply. Shielding nursing homes from the outside world proved to be problematic from an ethical point of view, laden with conflict and unenforceable in practice. Thousands of scientists engaged in research all 30