One elderly patient with underlying illnesses has died in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of fatalities to 527, while registered novel coronavirus infections in Hungary have increased by fifteen to 3,892, koronavirus.gov.hu said on Monday morning.
Fully 2,156 hospitalised patients have made a recovery. The number of active infections stands at 1,209. Altogether 41% of the active cases, 59% of the fatalities and 48% of full recoveries are in Budapest, the site said. Fully 417 Covid-19 patients are undergoing treatment in hospital, 25 of whom are on ventilators. Altogether 11,226 are in official home quarantine. The number of tests carried out stands at 187,965. The government says the aim is to steadily resume normal life based on a strict schedule, and it calls on citizens to follow general precautions. Budapest (1,848 people) has the highest number of infections, followed by Pest County (554), Fejér County (341) and Komárom-Esztergom (262). Békés County (11) has the lowest number.
At a regular press briefing of the operative board responsible for the epidemic response earlier on the weekend, board member Tibor Lakatos said the Hungarian government was lifting restrictions on Hungarian citizens returning from Bulgaria from Saturday. Travellers from Romania and Ukraine still have to undergo a 14-day home quarantine, Lakatos said. Lakatos warned that the epidemic was not yet over, and called on Hungarians to continue observing social distancing during vacations and domestic travels.
Speaking to public news channel M1 over the weekend, chief epidemiologist János Szlávik said the spread of the novel coronavirus appears to have been less aggressive in countries that have been administering the BCG vaccine for decades. Several countries, including Australia, are investigating the link between the BCG vaccine against tuberculosis (TB) and the milder spread of the virus, he said.
Meanwhile, the director of the infectology institute at Budapest’s South Pest Hospital Centre told the novekedes.hu website that four coronavirus patients are currently being treated with the blood plasma of recovered patients. István Vályi-Nagy told the news site that blood plasma treatment was in experimental phase, without a strictly set protocol. The four patients are in a stable condition, he said.
hungarymatters.hu
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