It’s official! PM Orbán confirms the extension of Covid-19 restrictions in Hungary

Photo: www.facebook.com/Orbán Viktor

Coronavirus-related restrictions could be eased when the number of vaccinated Hungarians reaches 2.5 million, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told public Kossuth Radio on Friday morning.

Current restrictions will remain in place unchanged for at least one more week from Monday, the prime minister said. He added that the decision had been made for one week only, becuase “much could change in a week”. He also said that Easter could be a risky period because the spread of the epidemic was linked to the number of contacts people made.

“There is a good chance (we) will have a (restrictions) free summer,” Orbán told public radio, adding that hospitals were managing to cope with a record wave of infections.

Increasing the number of vaccinations is the most important means of protection, he said. Currently four or five times as many people get vaccinated every week as the number of new infections, he added.

Hundreds of new Hungarian deaths appear in the Covid-19 statistics retrospectively

Orbán said the vaccination roll-out must be quick and this requires access to vaccines.

Since 500,000 fewer doses of AstraZeneca vaccines are scheduled to arrive over the next two months than originally agreed, the same amount of Eastern vaccines need to be acquired in order to maintain the original vaccination schedule, Orbán said.

Talks are under way and chances are good that the missing AstraZeneca vaccines can be replaced with Chinese and Russian jabs, he added.

Most resident doctors have been inoculated and assigned to hospitals, while medical students in their final year will be next in the order of vaccination, Orbán said.

Further restrictions would cause too much difficulty for the country, Orbán said, and encouraged families and entrepreneurs to “hold on”, and pledged that once the economy restarts, “next year could be strong and abundant”.

Reopening could be gradual, its phases aligned with the number of people vaccinated against the virus, he said.

The number of people inoculated could exceed 1.5 million on Friday, Orbán said, adding that 260,000 vaccination certificates had been issued so far. “Together with those who have been certified as recovered from Covid, two million people are now oficially immune,” he said. He also suggested that “in certain phases of re-opening” holders of immunity certificates could use more services than others.

On a different subject, Orbán said his nationalist Fidesz party would team up with like-minded parties in Italy and Poland to reorganise European right-wing politics. He would soon meet with Matteo Salvini, who heads Italy’s right-wing League party, and Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and “we will plan the future together.”

Fidesz on Thursday submitted its resignation from the European People’s Party (EPP), the mainstream conservative grouping in the European parliament.

Orbán said Fidesz had politically drifted away from the EPP in recent years on issues also including taxation and the handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Orbán, who faces elections in 2022, is up for the toughest challenge of his decade-long rule as a united opposition is running neck-and-neck with him in polls.

The premier has turned to increasingly hardline rhetoric in recent years, advocating “ethnic homogeneity,” mimicking Poland’s anti-LGBT politics with legal changes and using harsh language against Hungary’s Roma minority.