Coronavirus: Viktor Orban establishes partial containment in Hungary
Prime Minister Viktor Orban (our illustration photo) admitted that "there was a 50% risk that the health system could not cope" with this health challenge.
REUTERS / Bernadett Szabo
Text by: RFI Follow
3 min
In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban is reconfiguring the country.
Until now the restaurants, theaters and cinemas were open and the football stadiums welcomed thousands of spectators without masks.
Viktor Orban favored the functioning of the economy.
Result: this country of ten million inhabitants is experiencing a sharp increase in new cases: 4,000 contaminations and a hundred deaths per day.
The government has therefore decided to close performance halls and restaurants since November 11, as well as a curfew from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m.
High schools and universities are also closing, which reassures teachers a little.
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With our correspondent in Budapest,
Florence La Bruyère
In Hungary, high schools are closing, as are universities: henceforth teaching will be done at a distance.
Much to the relief of Zsuzsa Pocs, a French teacher in a Budapest high school: “
I am very relieved, because we were in danger.
You should know that with us, in the classrooms, wearing a mask was not compulsory.
In my school, there were positive cases, and everything went on as if nothing had happened.
The classes haven't closed, we weren't doing any tests, nothing.
"
If the children contaminate the teachers, "
it will happen everywhere
"
The schools are closing.
But elementary schools and colleges which welcome students up to the age of 14, remain open.
This worries this French teacher a lot: “
I am wholeheartedly with my colleagues who have to continue working because I think their lives are in danger;
Their health anyway.
We must not dream, if children get infected in elementary school, if they infect teachers, it will happen everywhere.
"
Rapid tests
To ward off these contaminations, teachers in primary schools will be tested, once a week, using rapid tests.
These tests are only 60% reliable, but better than nothing, said Viktor Orban.
According to the order of physicians, these measures come too late.
There is an influx of patients in hospitals, and not enough caregivers.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban himself admitted that “
there was a 50% risk that the health system could not cope
” with this health challenge.
Read also: Coronavirus: Hungary closes its borders to almost all foreigners
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Hungary
Coronavirus
Health and medicine
Viktor Orban