Orbán: 2.5 million inoculated, re-opening on Wednesday

“2.5 million Hungarians vaccinated. Shops and services can reopen!” Orbán said in a video message posted on Facebook.

“We have lived our lives now for a year in wartime-like conditions under restrictions, curfews and personal loss. The virus has waged a war against us and the only weapons with which we can win it are the vaccines,” he said.

The prime minister noted that Hungary had inoculated 2.5 times more people last month than in the preceding month. He said the vaccination campaign would continue at a similar pace.

“This allows the reopening of shops and services from tomorrow on,” Orbán said. He added, however, that anti-pandemic measures would remain in place and asked people to observe them.

Orbán thanked doctors and nurses for their work and repeatedly asked Hungarians to register and get vaccinated.

“Hungary can be, Hungary will be the European country where everybody gets a vaccine the fastest. Every life matters to us!”, he said.

In response, opposition parties DK and LMP criticised the government saying the announcement was “pure propaganda and a correction [of mistakes]”.

Balazs Barkoczi, DK’s spokesman, told MTI in a statement that the prime minister has yet again failed to give an explanation for “the utterly poor performance” of his government in handling the pandemic crisis.

“He failed to explain why Hungary has the world’s highest pandemic-related mortality number in proportion to the population, why elderly people do not have access to ventilator support and which of the government’s decisions led to the death of several thousand Hungarians whose life could have otherwise been saved”.

Barkoczi said DK demands that any further pandemic operation should be managed by a body of independent experts.

The co-leaders of LMP said that the extension of shop opening hours is “a correction of mistakes”, criticising the government for being “unprepared for the pandemic’s second and the third wave”.

They said that for its Tuesday decision the government failed to take into account the number of new infection cases, the number of people treated in hospitals and the number of fatalities.

They said their party calls on people to register for vaccination.