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DK CALLS ON GOVT TO PUBLISH VIRUS MAP

 

The opposition Democratic Coalition (DK) has called on the government to make Hungary’s “virus map” public as part of the response to the new coronavirus epidemic. Party spokesman Balázs Barkóczi told an online press conference that all European countries, “even Russia”, had published virus maps. Paradoxically, the government is “contributing to the spread of fake news” by holding back crucial information, he said. The epidemiologists and doctors DK has consulted said that a virus map providing data broken down by regions, gender and age would be of great help in the epidemic response and would by no means violate personal rights, Barkóczi said.
At another press conference over the weekend, DK called on the government to start mass testing for the novel coronavirus. Health expert Zoltán Komáromi told an online press conference no other country in the world has reported as even and gradual increase in the number of infections as Hungary did, insisting that many countries have been carrying out as many tests daily as Hungary has done in total so far. Komáromi said there was reason to assume that the Hungarian government did not want to know or did not want to report the actual number of infections. “Sticking one’s head in the sand puts people’s lives in danger,” he added. He called for tests to be carried out also on people who already died of pneumonia or similar causes, arguing that their contacts could also be infected now.