Hungary flags delay in reopening of schools as COVID-19 cases surge

Hungary’s planned reopening of schools and kindergartens on April 7 now appears “optimistic”, Zoltán Maruzsa, a state secretary in charge of education, said in a newspaper interview published on Thursday.

Hungary’s hospitals are under “extraordinary” pressure from rising coronavirus infections, its surgeon general said on Wednesday, as the country became a hotspot in the third wave of a pandemic that has hit Central Europe especially hard.

“We can rule out that the entire school year will be spent in remote learning. However, it takes some degree of optimism to take the April 7 reopening for granted,” Maruzsa told the Magyar Nemzet newspaper.

“For now it looks more likely that a return to classroom teaching can take a while longer, but we also need to see the developments of the next few days to assess that,” he said.