Coronavirus – Hungary to introduce changes to vaccination plan

Hungarian authorities will make some changes to the country’s vaccination plan to ensure that “as many people as possible” receive at least the first shot, and obtain “if not full but significant” protection against Covid-19, the chief medical officer said on Friday.

Cecília Müller told an online briefing held by the board coordinating efforts against the pandemic that “the first jab of almost all vaccines yields 50-75 percent protection”, which she said was sufficient to prevent serious Covid symptoms, complications, or death.

Müller said that the protocol of administering the second jab of the AstraZeneca vaccine could be changed.

She also said that the South-African variant of the coronavirus had been detected in a Hungarian patient. The patient had contacted a colleague who had visited Zambia, she added.

Müller warned that the number of new cases was increasing exponentially, but the appearance of new variants in Hungary was slower than elsewhere.

The new variants, she added, were stronger and more infectious, with a 70-percent higher reproduction rate than earlier variants. They can also cause a more serious illness, she said, calling on “everybody to do their own job to break the third wave”.