Hungary seems to have turned into a country of 10 million virologists, says President Áder
Janos Szlavik, a senior infectologist of the South-Pest Centrum Hospital, has urged residents to volunteer for vaccination against coronavirus as early as possible.
Speaking on President János Áder’s “Blue Planet” podcast on Monday, Szlávik said that any vaccine licenced in Hungary was “good”, adding that “these vaccines rarely have serious side effects”. Possible side effects such as muscle pain or headache were the same as with any other vaccine, he added.
A vaccine with 80 percent efficacy will “halt the epidemic and prevent people from dying” just the same as another at 95 percent, he insisted.
Ader noted in his podcast that Hungary was waiting for larger vaccine deliveries and that currently “there is no choice given between products”.
He said it was up to the individual to decide whether to “wait, even until the summer, for a western vaccine or have a less modern Chinese within a few days.”
Szlávik said in response that “the good decision is to get inoculated as soon as possible” so that “life can return to the old routine.”
Áder said he was “for the vaccine” and noted that he and his wife had registered for the jab in December.
While only 15 percent of the population indicated readiness to get inoculated a few weeks ago, that ratio has increased to 34 percent, he added.
The president warned it was “dangerous” that Hungary “seems to have turned into a country of 10 million virologists”.
Public health authority researches ‘UK variant’
The Hungarian public health authority (NNK) is researching a fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus, first detected in the United Kingdom late last year, to determine whether currently available vaccines would be effective against it.
Virologist Zoltán Kiss told public news channel M1 on Monday that the team is currently propagating the virus variant to see whether the blood serum of patients recovered from the “original” variant can neutralise it.
If variant N501Y turns out to be impervious to serum immune to the previous variant, the vaccine under development will have to be altered accordingly, Kiss said.
New variants of the coronavirus have been spreading rapidly in the UK, Brazil and South Africa, and have been detected in several European countries, including Hungary, Kiss said.
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Source: MTI