A call to stay home at Easter

One day before the long Easter holiday, starting with Good Friday, a conservative columnist invites people to refrain from the usual Easter celebrations and festivities to keep the infection curb flat.

As Hungary reaches 1000 confirmed COVID-19 infections, Mandiner’s, Gellért Rajcsányi wonders why the infection rate is so low. Such figures of course represent only patients who have tested positive for coronavirus, and Hungary tests far less people than Germany, for instance. But even if multiplied by 30, the infection rate would represent only 0.3 per cent of the population, 1/30 and 1/50 of the calculated rates in Italy and Spain, and ten times less than even the lower estimated rates in France or Germany. Is it because BCG vaccines have been mandatory in Hungary for the past 66 years and it appears that they keep the immune system more alert to coronavirus infections? – he wonders. Or is it the fact that Hungarians, as a result of their battered history, are genetically more mixed than westerners? – he asks, though he admits he cannot answer his own question. Perhaps people have after all been more disciplined than we ourselves thought we were capable of – he adds. Whatever the reason is, he urges his fellow Hungarians to stay at home during the Easter holidays and ‘keep the curve flat’.

Tags: coronavirus, Easter