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10.21 – Hungary relaxes and ‘says goodbye to masks’

Hungary will scrap most of the remaining corona measures. This will happen as soon as the number of vaccinated people reaches 5 million this weekend, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced on the radio. “That means we have defeated the third wave of the pandemic,” said Orbán, adding that it is time to “say goodbye to face masks.”

In Hungary, which has approximately 10 million inhabitants, almost half of the population has now received at least one dose of a corona vaccine. Unlike other EU member states, the country uses drugs from China and Russia that have yet to be approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). This made it possible to vaccinate quickly.

A top Hungarian official said this week that his country does not need new vaccines from Pfizer / BioNTech. Hungary is said to have purchased sufficient vaccines and is the only member state not participating in a new contract between the EU and those Western companies. “If we have to vaccinate the population again in the fall, we are ready,” said Minister Gergely Gulyás.

Hungary had already withdrawn many corona measures when the vaccination campaign progressed. Hotels, restaurants, cinemas and other businesses were allowed to reopen their doors. In the next relaxation phase, the curfew will also be canceled, according to Orbán.

The Hungarian economy has been hit hard by the corona crisis and shrank by 5 percent last year. Orbán, who must be re-elected in 2022, is counting on economic growth again this year. According to him, this could even be higher than the 4.3 percent predicted by his government.

06.50 – ‘Japan refrains from using corona vaccine AstraZeneca’

Japan is unlikely to use the corona vaccine from British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reports. The Japanese government is taking that decision despite the expectation that the AstraZeneca vaccine will be approved by the regulator on Friday.

The withdrawal of the AstraZeneca vaccine would have been prompted by concerns about the very rare side effect of thrombosis, or blood clots. The Japanese government also expects the Moderna corona vaccine to be formally approved on Friday. That vaccine should help to get the Japanese vaccination campaign, one of the slowest in the developed world, up and running.

Japan has been struggling in recent weeks with an increase in the number of new infections every day. The government has recently declared a state of emergency for several prefectures, including Tokyo and Osaka. There is growing concern in the country about the Olympic Games, which should take place in July and August.

A survey by Reuters news agency shows that as many as 70 percent of Japanese companies would prefer the Olympics to be postponed again, or even canceled. About 32 percent want the games to be held later, and of 37 percent (8 percent more than in February), the games in Tokyo do not have to take place at all.

The total numbers of corona infections and deaths from Covid-19 are relatively low in Japan, a country with 126 million inhabitants. In total, more than 0.7 million infections have been diagnosed. The country has mourned about 12,000 corona deaths so far.

06.06 – India reports nearly 260,000 new corona infections in 24 hours

In India, nearly 260,000 new corona infections have been diagnosed in the past 24 hours, the Indian Ministry of Health reported Friday morning. This represents a decrease of about 16,000 cases compared to Thursday.

With the new cases, the total number of diagnosed infections in India comes to 26.03 million. That number is probably much higher in reality because corona tests are only available to a limited extent.

Although the number of new infections has decreased in the past 24 hours, the number of deaths in the last 24 hours has increased. That was about 4,200, some 300 more than the number of deaths reported Thursday. This brings the total official number of Indian corona deaths to 291,331.

India has the highest number of infections in the world after the United States and the highest death toll after the United States and Brazil, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

00.02 – First corona wave shorter, but more intense than flu wave 2017 and 2018

The first wave of corona claimed about as many victims as the flu epidemic in 2017 and 2018, but it did so in half the time. The bulk of the victims also fell in the south, where they were spread across the country during the flu epidemic. The first corona wave was therefore shorter and less widespread, but where and when it was more intense. This is reported by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS).

The new coronavirus has often been compared to the flu during the pandemic, especially by people who wanted to question the seriousness of the virus. Prime Minister Mark Rutte responded to this during his second speech in the Torentje. He said the virus is not a harmless flu “what the protesters out here still seem to think,” referring to the protest that could be heard in his office.

In comparison with the coronavirus, the severe flu epidemic of 2017 and 2018 is often cited. According to the researchers at Statistics Netherlands, it looks a lot like the first wave of the corona virus at first sight. In both cases, the number of deaths was 9,000 higher than normal for the time of the year and the care was struggling with capacity problems.

But there are also clear differences. “The corona epidemic was accompanied by drastic measures to prevent the spread of infection, while a flu epidemic means that part of the population is vaccinated,” say the statisticians. The first wave of the corona epidemic also lasted nine weeks, while the flu epidemic discussed lasted eighteen weeks. As a result, the corona virus made relatively more victims. Also, many more young people, men and long-term care users died from Covid-19.

In addition, the corona virus was concentrated much more in specific regional trouble spots. In the beginning, these were mainly East Brabant and Limburg, later also other areas such as the region around Zwolle and the large cities. The northern provinces remained largely unaffected. There was no early fire here and the lockdown measures did their job afterwards.

The researchers also point out that people infected with the coronavirus during the first wave were much more likely to die than if they had contracted the seasonal flu. The death rate from corona during the first wave in European countries was between 0.5 and 1.4 percent. That of the seasonal flu is estimated at 0.1 percent. “Without a vaccine or social distancing measures, therefore, the number of infections as well as the number of deaths would have continued to increase,” the researchers write about the coronavirus.

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