Today representatives of the government will not attend the meeting of the Committee on Social Welfare; naturally, at a later date, after the end of the state of danger, they will be happy to oblige the committee in order to render an account of the status of the coronavirus epidemic to members of the committee.

Committee Chair Lajos Korózs has recently invited representatives of the government and the Operational Group on many occasions, and on previous occasions they were always happy to accept the invitations. In addition to their daily work and the daily press conferences, they were at the committee’s disposal to answer questions for hours and to update members about the status of the epidemic.

Today, however, representatives of the government do not wish to attend. Also today, the containment of the epidemic requires full-time work at full intensity on the part of the disease control authorities and health care executives.

This is to inform the Chair of the Committee on Social Welfare that thanks to the successful containment effort, the timely adoption of decisions and the cooperation of members of the Hungarian public, in Hungary so far we have managed to avoid mass incidences and an explosion of the epidemic. The numbers of new infections, active infections and hospitalised patients are on the decrease, and thanks to this we have been able to lift the restrictions on movement and are gradually restarting life and health care services.

At the same time, we are closely monitoring the epidemiological effects of the relaxing measures as well as elderly care homes because according to data so far, every fourth infected person as well as every fourth fatality is an elderly care home resident. We wish to thank the Hungarian people for following the press conferences of the Operational Group, observing their recommendations, and increasingly recognising fake news related to the epidemic manufactured for political or business gain.

(Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister/MTI)