Good news on Covid, at last

HUNGARY - In Brief 28 Nov 2021 by Istvan Racz

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A so-called Vaccination Week is being held in Hungary since Monday, meaning that people can get Covid vaccines at a big number of 'vaccination points' (typically hospitals) without any previous registration, through extended hours every day. As a result, nationwide vaccination numbers have started to move up rapidly again, after several months of a snail-pace crawl previously.Between Monday and Saturday this week, some 742 thousand people have received vaccines, most of them getting their booster (normally 3rd) shots. But the most valuable result was the upturn of 91 thousand so far completely unvaccinated people. Boosters are also highly important, especially because of the big number of those who got Sputnik (Russian) or Sinopharm (Chinese) as their first and second shots, the latter two not being quite up to the quality of Pfizers or Modernas, to put it politely. For boosters, they appear to be using Pfizer, Moderna and Janssen, of which people can typically freely choose on the spot.As a consequence, vaccination rates were standing at 71% of the eligible (over 12 years) population for first shots, 68% for second shots, and 28% for boosters. This is now getting close to meaningful levels, from the point of view of the probability of serious-state Covid or even death cases. As illustration, please see the following recent chart from the EU Commission:We believe that the new momentum of domestic vaccination may be attributed to the combination of growing public fear of the ongoing 4th wave and the fact that without the requirement of previous registration, people without internet (some one-third of the population) or simply having an overly tight work schedule could g...