Hungary's media, health experts seek more COVID-19 data
Hungary's media, health experts seek more COVID-19 data
BUDAPEST (AP) — As coronavirus infections and deaths soar in Hungary, the country’s journalists and public health professionals are demanding more detailed data on the outbreak from the government, with some experts saying that greater transparency might boost lagging vaccination rates.
Information is often hard to find in the country of over 9 million people, where infection rates have broken records and daily deaths per capita are among the highest in the world.
Although Hungary has secured vaccine doses from China and Russia in addition to those provided by the European Union, nearly a third of its adults still have not received a single shot. That hesitancy is something immunologist Andras Falus said can be partly attributed to official communications about the pandemic being “extremely poor, inconsistent and totally incapable of maintaining trust.”
“A significant proportion of the population no longer believes when they receive real data, or resign themselves to not paying attention to the data because they feel almost viscerally that it is inconsistent and unreliable,” said Falus, professor emeritus at Semmelweis University in Budapest.
