“All I can say about the swing after the terrace opening is that we, the health workers, will be there by the bedside, we will give the right medicines, we will do everything for people’s lives,” Gábor Zacher, the chief physician of Hatvan Hospital, told Index. We sought the toxicologist after it opened on April 24th the terraces and garden areas.
On the first half-free evening the capital became a party district, suddenly freed from the confinement, crowds covered the seated parts of the restaurants, as if there had been a festival in Budapest. Gábor Zacher would not call what he saw in the pictures as a festival, but as a swarm.
Suddenly, the three green lights came on, as in Formula One, and people went where they could see. I believe that everyone’s capital is already full of confinement, but we have to accept that our desires and the epidemic situation are still not parallel. He witnesses a very high degree of irresponsibility, an incredible indiscipline, which we saw on Saturday and Sunday. And this will not be fasting tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, but you will feel it in a week or two. I hope I’m wrong. I hope I’m not right
Gábor Zacher told our newspaper.
17
Gallery: Opening of the terrace, or the day of euphoriaPhoto: Tamás Kaszás / Index
–
–
The first vaccination is not enough
According to the chief doctor, everyone forgets that after a vaccination, no one is protected yet. Moreover, adequate protection is achieved from day 14 after the second vaccination.
We treat patients who are hospitalized after their second vaccination. In fact, they weren’t on a ventilator, so the course of the disease really isn’t that severe. However, the infection can be acquired and transmitted after the first and second vaccinations. And here I turn back to the terrace opening: the waiters are young, many have not even received their first vaccination. Even though they have a mask on them, they can catch the infection from the guest. I don’t want to be pessimistic, I would also be very happy to have our lives back, but I can’t stress it: it still requires discipline
Underlined the chief physician, who also pointed out that in the reopening fever, walkers also forgot to wear a mask. As he said, this is not primarily a cough, a droplet infection that gives way to the spread of the virus, but clinging to microscopic particles in the air, so to speak, the virus “surfs”. This way we can infect not only the person walking 80 meters away from us, but also the person up to 200 meters away.
Millions of people without masks on the streets, parks, squares. Why? Why can’t we understand the consequences of this? It should not be assumed that today, instead of three hundred, two hundred have died. This data is not “up-to-date” as, unfortunately, the majority of deaths are patients who have been in hospital for a week or two or more. It is true that there are fewer patients, I must also say that the situation is visibly improving. However, for this to remain the case, we still need to be careful. Is this such a big request?
Said Gábor Zacher.
Next challenge: post-Covid
As already reported by the Index, many patients after Covid-19 do not feel completely asymptomatic after the first recovery from the acute phase, does not return to pre-infection status. Although their initial and acute Covid symptoms — that is, fever, cough, shortness of breath, muscle aches, loss of smell, and sense of taste — are gone, they do not feel as they did before the infection. “Cured” include the following complaints: persistent and / or severe fatigue, joint pain, chest pain, headache, rapid heartbeat, memory and attention problems, sleep disturbances, rash, hair loss. According to the toxicologist, the good news is that there are fewer patients as more and more people see a doctor with post-Covid symptoms:
I think this will be the next huge task. More and more people are asking for help with symptoms like vision problems, skin lesions, mental problems – and now I’ve only mentioned the three most common ones. It will be a huge burden to “can I go back to work?”, “Do I perform the same way?”, “How much has my physical condition, my life changed?” And I could list. This would turn me back to the current swarm: be patient, ask for vaccinations, wait for protection, no need for mechanical ventilation, hospital treatment, post-Covid ambulance. It is everyone’s own responsibility.
Two or three weeks from the terrace?
As the Index wrote, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Friday announced that the number of people vaccinated had reached three and a half million, so restaurants could reopen their gardens and terraces from Saturday. The prime minister also said the start of the curfew has been changed to 23 hours from April 24, as it is not certain that everyone will be able to get home by 10 in the evening. It was published the same day about the partial opening Decision of the Minister of the Interior Sándor Pintér, and on Saturday the moment came: the streets of the capital were full of life again, and restaurants and cafes could be switched to large – scale operation again.
Hubl Hlatky-Schlichter, owner of KIOSK at the foot of the Elizabeth Bridge in Budapest, told the Index after opening the terrace:
We will only be open for two or three weeks if everyone behaves so irresponsibly.
According to the owner of the restaurant nothing will be good, as the crowd crawled on each other’s necks and backs in the downtown area, and not from the fact that street balls would be held everywhere after that.
(Cover image: Gábor Zacher on November 29, 2013. Photo: Zsolt Czeglédi / MTI)
– .
