Coronavirus: Hungary is in ‘the most critical’ period, says chief medical officer

Hungary is in “the most critical” period of its management of the coronavirus pandemic, with the country registering record caseload and deaths each day, the chief medical officer said on Wednesday.

Health authorities are doing all they can to bring down the death rate, Cecília Müller told an online press briefing of the operative board responsible for handling the pandemic, noting that Hungary saw a record 195 Covid-19 fatalities on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, hospitals are close to reaching full capacity, with 10,284 Covid patients hospitalised, 1,128 of them on ventilators, she said.

Müller urged the public to observe hygiene regulations and get vaccinated.

“There’s no time to wait; there’s nothing to wait for,” she said, emphasising that all five vaccines in use in Hungary were effective in preventing serious complications from the disease.

Müller said

the number of new daily Covid cases was expected to keep rising “for the next 1-2 weeks”.

• Latest numbers: Covid-19: Hungary daily deaths at record high – March 17, 2021

Coronavirus – Hungary gets another 100,000 doses of Sinopharm vaccine

Hungary has taken delivery of another 100,000 doses of China’s Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine, Péter Szijjártó, the minister of foreign affairs and trade, said on Wednesday.

The consignment has arrived a full 43 days before the delivery deadline, allowing Hungary to begin administering the vaccines that much earlier, Szijjártó said in a video on Facebook.

The minister added that the government cargo plane transporting the vaccines will soon depart again to deliver hundreds of thousands of more vaccines to Hungary from the East.

“The earlier vaccines arrive, the earlier Hungarian doctors can administer them to the public, giving more Hungarians immunity,”

Szijjártó said.

Altogether 1,397,342 people have been vaccinated in Hungary so far, 406,746 of whom have received a second shot.

Read alsoCaseload expected to remain high for this long in Hungary

Source: MTI