BUDAPEST / PRAGUE (Reuters) – Hungarian hospitals are under “extraordinary” pressure over growing coronavirus infection, their general surgeon said on Wednesday as the country became a hot spot in the third wave of a pandemic that especially affected central Europe.
Like much of the region, Hungary managed to curb infections during the initial phase of the pandemic in March-April last year with quick and strict blocking measures.
However, a new wave of infections that has ravaged the region in 2021 has seen Hungary surpass the Czech Republic this week as the country with the highest per capita deaths per day by COVID-19 in the world, according to data of Our World in Data.
Experts have reduced it to the spread of the much more contagious variant of the virus first found in Britain, which accounts for most reported cases and infects entire families.
The region is also home to many large factories where remote work has not been possible, and this time governments have been reluctant to quickly impose a closure, for fear of a return to their economies after the recession. ‘last year.
Although new infections in the Czech Republic and Slovakia have begun to decline, Poland reported a record number of new cases of just over 30,000 and the government reflected on sending patients to different regions to help dealing with hospitals.
He ordered theaters, shopping malls, hotels and cinemas to close last week as infections increased, but more restrictions are being taken advantage of before the Easter holidays, typically marked by church services in the deeply Catholic country.
In Hungary, a country of about 10 million people, a total of 18,952 people have died from coronavirus.
“I ask you to do everything you can to avoid getting infected and avoid having to go to the hospital, as hospitals are struggling under an extraordinary load,” general surgeon Cecilia Muller said in a briefing.
Muller said about 500 volunteers (health students and qualified health personnel) have gone to help hospitals after a government petition was filed this week.
Earlier this month, some 4,000 medical workers left the public health system because of reforms initiated by the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, which exacerbated the shortage of medical staff for years.
On Wednesday, Tamas Sved, secretary of the Hungarian medical chamber, told the website hvg.hu that if new infections are not curbed through reduced social contact, Hungary could become the new keyword of the worst of the crisis.
“Without this, we could get to the point where Europe will be a larger Hungarian city and no longer Bergamo (in Italy) which is cited as a tragic example,” he said.
VACCINES: RACE AGAINST THE WEATHER
Hungary, which leads the EU in vaccine imports and per capita vaccination rates according to data from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, has administered at least one dose of vaccine to 1.7 million people. But it is still not enough.
“For some reason, most of Eastern Europe has failed in the fight against the pandemic,” said sociologist Daniel Prokop, who has been tracking the behavior of Czechs through the pandemic.
He said in an article this week that on-site work is more common in Central Europe because of the number of factories – including large carmakers – located here. This has led to an increase in infections.
Lower incomes also mean more people are forced to work even if that means exposing themselves or other people to the contagion, he said. Governments in the region pay less for sick leave than in Western Europe.
After hospitalizations reached critical levels, the Czech Republic introduced a tougher closure on March 1 and implemented widespread testing in the workplace. Since then it has experienced an improvement in the number of cases.
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis admitted mistakes following criticism that the government was slow to introduce restrictions in the autumn, when figures soared earlier.
However, in Hungary, Prime Minister Orban is already arguing with business options to reopen stores with caution, even as cases escalate. The government will soon decide on measures for Easter. All schools are in remote training until April 7th.
Report by Krisztina Than and Anita Komuves; Edited by Toby Chopra