Hungary hospitals under ‘extraordinary’ pressure as pandemic sweeps eastern Europe – UPDATE

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.

Like much of the region, Hungary managed to curb infections during the initial phase of the pandemic in March-April last year with fast and strict lockdown measures.

However, a new wave of infections that has swept through the region in 2021 has seen Hungary this week overtake the Czech Republic as the country with the world’s highest daily COVID-19 deaths per capita, according to figures from Our World in Data.

Experts have put this down to the spread of the much more contagious virus variant first found in Britain, which accounts for most reported cases now and infects entire families.

The region is also host to many large factories where remote work has not been possible and, this time round, governments have been reluctant to quickly impose a lockdown, fearing another blow to their economies after last year’s recession.

While new infections in the Czech Republic and Slovakia have started to decline, Poland reported a record number of new cases just shy of 30,000 and the government mulled sending patients to different regions to help hospitals cope.

It ordered theatres, shopping malls, hotels and cinemas to close last week as infections rose, but more restrictions loom ahead of the Easter holidays, typically marked by packed church services in the deeply Catholic country.

In Hungary, a country with a population of nearly 10 million, a total of 18,952 people have died of coronavirus.

“I am asking you to do everything possible to avoid getting infected and avoid having to go to the hospital as hospitals are struggling under an extraordinary burden,” Surgeon General Cecília Müller told a briefing.

Muller said about 500 volunteers – health students and skilled healthcare staff – have gone to help at hospitals after a plea went out from the government this week.

Earlier this month, about 4,000 medical workers quit the public health system over reforms begun by Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government, aggravating a years-long shortage of medical staff.