BUDAPEST / PRAGUE (Reuters) – Hungarian hospitals are under “extraordinary” pressure due to the rise in coronavirus infections, their surgeon general said on Wednesday, when the country became a hot spot in the third wave of a pandemic that hit Central Europe in a particularly harsh way.
Like much of the region, Hungary was able to contain infections during the initial phase of the pandemic in March-April last year with rapid and strict blockade measures.
However, a new wave of infections that swept the region in 2021 caused Hungary to overtake the Czech Republic this week as the country with the highest number of daily COVID-19 deaths per capita, according to figures from Our World in Date.
Experts attribute this to the spread of a much more contagious variant of the virus, found for the first time in Britain, which is responsible for most of the cases now reported and infects entire families.
The region is also home to many large factories where remote work was not possible, and this time, governments were reluctant to impose a blockade quickly, fearing another blow to their economies after last year’s recession.
Although new infections in the Czech Republic and Slovakia have started to subside, Poland has reported a record number of new cases, almost 30,000, and the government has considered sending patients to different regions to help hospitals deal with the situation.
She ordered theaters, shopping malls, hotels and cinemas to close last week with rising infections, but more restrictions are approaching the Easter holiday, typically marked by crowded religious services in a deeply Catholic country.
In Hungary, a country with a population of almost 10 million, a total of 18,952 people died of coronavirus.
“I am asking you to do everything possible to avoid infection and avoid having to go to the hospital, as hospitals are struggling with an extraordinary burden,” said surgeon general Cecilia Muller at a news conference.
Muller said about 500 volunteers – health students and qualified health staff – went to help hospitals after a government appeal came out this week.
Earlier this month, some 4,000 medical professionals left the public health system because of reforms initiated by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government, aggravating the years-long shortage of medical professionals.
On Wednesday, Tamas Sved, secretary of the Hungarian Medical Chamber, told hvg.hu that if new infections are not contained by reducing social contact, Hungary could become the new synonym for the worst of the crisis. .
“Without that, we could get to the point where in Europe it will be a bigger city in Hungary and no longer Bergamo (in Italy) which is cited as a tragic example,” he said.
VACCINES: RACING AGAINST TIME
Hungary, which leads the EU in vaccine imports and vaccination rates per capita according to data from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, 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 to fight the pandemic,” said sociologist Daniel Prokop, who has been monitoring the Czechs’ behavior during the pandemic.
He said in an article this week that on-site work is more common in Central Europe due to the number of factories – including large automakers – located here. This led to an increase in infections.
Lower incomes also mean that more people are forced to work, even if it means exposing themselves or exposing others to 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 more severe block on March 1 and implemented widespread testing in the workplace. Since then, it has seen some improvement in case numbers.
Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis admitted mistakes after criticism that the government was slow to introduce restrictions in the fall, when the numbers soared earlier.
In Hungary, however, Prime Minister Orban is already discussing business options for the cautious reopening of stores, despite the increase in cases. The government will decide on measures for Easter soon. All schools are in distance learning until the 7th of April.
Reporting by Krisztina Than and Anita Komuves; Toby Chopra’s Edition