After 24 or 36 hours: Hungary eases Covid-19 restrictions

Photo: MTI

The number of people vaccinated in Hungary is expected to reach 2.5 million – a threshold that will trigger a gradual easing of pandemic restrictions – by midnight on Tuesday or Wednesday morning at the latest, the government information centre (KTK) said on Monday.

Interior Minister Sándor Pintér must establish the 2.5 million mark has been reached in a resolution, after which time government decree number 144 will come into force, KTK said.

The decree will shorten the nighttime curfew by two hours from 10:00 pm until 5:00 am; it will extend business hours to between 5:00 in the morning and 9:30 at night; and it will allow businesses that were shuttered from March 8 to contain the spread of the coronavirus to re-open, but with the number of customers limited to one for every ten square metres.

The decree will not affect the ban on dining in at restaurants and recreational stays at hotels.

Schools and kindergartens will re-open on April 19, after educators and staff have been inoculated, KTK said.

The Reuters said yesterday, in the past seven days, Slovakia has posted the world’s seventh highest per-capita death rate from COVID-19, according to online publication Our World in Data.