Hungary announced a record number of Covid-19 deaths as a powerful surge of the pandemic put an unprecedented strain on the country’s health care.
Health officials announced 195 deaths in the last 24 hours, breaking the previous peak of 193 in early December.
The number of patients being treated for the disease rose to nearly 10,300, also a record, and nearly three times the number of those admitted to hospital in early February when the latest surge began.
Hungary has the seventh highest Covid-19 deaths per one million inhabitants in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Officials have sought to mitigate the surge with new restrictions and a vaccination programme that has made Hungary one of the most-vaccinated countries in Europe.
A new shipment of 100,000 doses of the Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccine, which among European Union countries is only being used in Hungary, is expected to arrive on Wednesday, foreign minister Peter Szijjarto wrote on his Facebook page.
With more than 50,000 jabs on Tuesday, nearly 1.4 million people have received at least one jab, the second-highest rate in the EU.
