Economy 13 April 2021, 2:45pm

PM Orbán: 3 million people vaccinated against COVID-19, easing looms

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Hungary has inoculated its 3 millionth citizen against coronavirus, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has announced on his Facebook page on Tuesday. In view of previous remarks by government officials, current restrictions may be eased further shortly. In the meantime, the rolling 7-day average of coronavirus-related deaths reached a new high.

The government has decided to link the easing of lockdown measures to the ratio of the population vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2. The first such milestone was set to 2.5 million and once it was reached, the easing of curbs was announced. These included the re-opening of stores with longer opening hours, the shortening of the night curfew and the re-opening of nurseries and schools. The latter decision was subsequently modified and secondary schools are to switch back to in-class learning only on 10 May, which raises a whole lot of questions, particularly because most teachers will not have built full protection against coronavirus by the time they have to return to classrooms (19 April).

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán came up with the 2.5 million threshold on the conviction that this is the number that would mean everyone over the age of 65, i.e. the most at risk of dying of coronavirus-related diseases, was vaccinated.

According to the latest ECDC statistics on Covid-19 vaccine rollout, 63.8% of people in the 80+ age group have been vaccinated against COVID-19 with the first dose as of 13 April, while the ratio is 72.1% in the 70-79 age group, 55.8% in the 60-65 age group, 34% in the 50-59, 14.5% in the 25-49 and 6.2% in the 18-24 age groups..

Full vaccination percentages look like this

80+: 42.3%
70-79: 36.0%
60-65: 21.2%
50-59: 11.0%
25-49: 4.4%
18-24: 2.4%.

(These are calculated from the number of first doses/full vaccinations among adults by age group (18-24, 25-49, 50-59, 60-69, 70-79 and 80+ years) divided by the country population for the specific age group and displayed as a percentage. Full vaccination is defined according to the instructions of the manufacturer for each vaccine product.)

The second milestone was set to 3 million but so far no official explanation has been provided as to why.

However, as this is the second victory lap the cabinet runs in its 'vaccination race', we can expect further easing measures to be in the pipeline, which should be announced in the near future, most likely on Wednesday.

Gergely Gulyás, minister in charge of the Prime Minister's Office, said the government would decide on the next steps of re-opening once there are 3 million people vaccinated against coronavirus.

Experts agree and international examples show that 30% of the population vaccinated with the first dose is not (well, should not be) enough to lifting lockdown measures, as this 'milestone' has no meaningful impact on the epidemic curve.

In the meantime, the rolling 7-day average of Covid deaths reached an all-time high of 269, according to today's official report.

Cover photo: Dentist Szimonetta Török administers a second dose of Comirnaty, a COVID-19 vaccine manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech, at a vaccination site in Budapest's Honvédkórház (Military Hospital) on 13 April 2021. Photo by MTI/Zsolt Szigetváry