BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Hungary has identified two cases of the coronavirus variant first detected in India, the government official in charge of vaccinations said on Friday.
Hungary has been badly hit by the pandemic, and according to Johns Hopkins University data is the country with the most deaths per 100,000 people. An especially lethal third wave has been easing after an aggressive vaccination campaign.
“The Indian variant is present in Hungary, according to experts we cannot exclude the possibility of a new wave of the pandemic,” Istvan Gyorgy, deputy minister and head of the government’s task force on vaccinations, told a news conference.
Surgeon General Cecilia Muller added one of the two patients has recovered already. Contact tracing was unable to establish how they were infected. Neither of them spent time abroad recently.
(Reporting by Anita Komuves and Marton Dunai; Editing by Frances Kerry)