Removal of further Covid restrictions is taking place

HUNGARY - In Brief 29 Jun 2021 by Istvan Racz

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In our latest report last week, we wrote that local Covid news was just excellent. Well, it still is, or more accurately it has even improved further since then. This morning, the 7-day average of daily new infections was at 56 and daily Covid deaths were at only 4 cases. At present, a total of 150 Covid patients are reported from hospitals and 22 of them are in serious conditions. These are very low numbers indeed, essentially meaning that for the moment, Covid has come close to nonexistent in Hungary.The foregoing also means that so far at least, there is no sign of the four full-house (over 60 thousand people in a stadium at the same time) football matches under the UEFA EURO 2021 series in Budapest, between June 15-27, having any negative implication on local Covid numbers, which is great news. Part of the explanation must be precautionary measures, as PCR tests or vaccination cards were required from everyone being present at those events. Another part is pure luck, as neither of England, Scotland, Wales or Russia played in Budapest, keeping fans from these more heavily infected countries away from Hungary. A third part must be the weather. Covid is not a seasonal disease fundamentally, but it has significant seasonal features. The virus does not like hot and dry weather, the one which is predominant locally in these days.Given improvements on Covid, and everyone's strong wish to give a push to the summer touristic season, the government have announced a further string of measures to remove various Covid-related restrictions in recent days. First, they discontinued border checks at Schengen zone borders, except for air travel, on June 24. Second, they have decided...