Overview of the National Preventive Mechanism A two-day strategic communication meeting, which is regularly held in October between the Ombudsman, all of the commission members and AOB staff entrusted with OPCAT duties, was planned to be held in summer 2020 but could not take place due to the pandemic. As the following chapters will show, the NPM was not inactive even during the first lockdown when small visits took place. The NPM found alternative creative ways of preparing for the coming challenges, maintaining contact with institutions, decision-makers and civil society, and of exchanging ideas with stakeholders per video conferencing among others. The NPM also was and still is in contact with representatives from SPT, CPT, APT and NPMs from other countries to reflect on its own way of working and to win impulses for new initiatives on the basis of this experience. Continues contact with institutions and authorities The legislation enforced for the protection of the people infringed many rights that are guaranteed under constitutional law. Persons of all ages were equally affected, but the intensity and the consequences of the restrictions vary greatly due to inequality in economic, family and health resources. What has become evident is the realisation that in the pandemic all areas of life are dependent on a functioning public health system. The NPM had to be flexible when it came to making priorities. In particular, in “less traditional places of detention”, the planned focus areas were redefined. It was possible, however, to emphasise the significance of preventive human rights protection during the first lockdown in spring 2020. The NPM was successful in countering the general, in some cases disproportionate, restrictions of fundamental and human rights by raising them for discussion, and both the State and private decision-makers were obliged to justify their actions during the health crisis. Based on the experience made by the commissions on their visits, the NPM strongly demanded both more legal security and increased efforts for the protection of particularly vulnerable persons, especially in nursing homes and institutions for persons with disabilities. The NPM also emphasised in the print media, TV and radio interviews that containing a pandemic calls for consequent government action for protecting human life. According to the data platform “Our World in Data”, Austria temporarily recorded the highest number of new infections and registered COVID-19 deaths per inhabitant on average per week in the world in mid-November 2020. Both Statistics Austria and the European mortality monitoring body, Euromomo, have been assuming a very high or high excess mortality rate since the beginning of November 2020. Whilst the pandemic caused a total of 706 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 deaths from 25 February to 22 June 2020, 2,540 persons alone died of or with COVID-19 in Austria in calendar week 49, totalling 6,312 persons by the end of the year. Around half of these persons had been residents of care facilities. 14