Breaking: Hungary to abolish almost all restrictions from next Monday!

Hungary will scrap mask mandates from Monday, and phase out most coronavirus-related measures, the prime minister’s chief of staff told a regular press conference on Thursday.

The government will also lift the regulations enabling companies to make vaccines mandatory for employees, and scrap those regulating the use of immunity certificates, Gergely Gulyás said. Meanwhile,

the special legal order will remain in place to enable swift government action

should a sixth wave of the pandemic hit the country, he said.

Hungary’s security is of paramount importance in the current situation; “it is in the country’s explicit interest that it should not drift into the war” in Ukraine, the prime minister’s chief of staff added today. The Hungarian government has “firmly decided” not to send troops to Ukraine, nor will it allow weapons to be transported across the Hungary-Ukraine border, Gergely Gulyás said.

Read also: Will the government vaccinate you, if you come as a refugee?

Referring to “experts’ opinion and available information”, Gulyás said

there was a fair chance that “those shipments could be destroyed”,

adding that the Hungarian decision was serving the security of Transcarpathia and its people. The security of the local ethnic Hungarian minority is most important, Gulyás said. Many have been forced to leave Ukraine, he said, but added that men between 18-60 were now forbidden to leave the country, therefore “many families have decided to stay”.

Gulyás also noted the government’s position that refugees should be accommodated in the first secure country, which, for Ukrainian refugees, was Hungary.