Trust of official statistics also has been a problem in Russia, where some experts have criticized official data on COVID-19 infections and deaths provided by the state coronavirus task force, arguing the reported numbers were likely an undercount.ĭata analysts have pointed to inconsistencies in Russia's virus statistics that they say suggest manipulation. Those issues were ultimately remedied late last year. Similar problems were reported earlier in the pandemic in the Czech Republic, where mayors said they lacked details about the numbers of infected people in their communities that harmed mitigation efforts like distributing personal protective equipment.
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Yet last month, Hungary's National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information asked the government to release infection data at the municipal level to mayors, writing that both local leaders and the public "need to know the figures in order to make informed decisions about how to protect themselves against the pandemic." "This is one of the reasons behind the cooperation of the population, successful disease control and the fact that we are the first in the EU in terms of booster vaccination," a government spokesperson wrote, adding that criticisms of its pandemic response were "politically motivated." Hungary's government defended its data practices, saying in an email that it was "setting an example by communicating on a daily basis epidemiological data." On Friday, the government's official coronavirus website reported 166 daily deaths, 6,884 new infections and 6,939 virus patients being treated in hospitals, 573 of whom were on ventilators. That hesitancy is something Falus said can be partly attributed to official communications about the pandemic released by the conservative government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban being "extremely poor, inconsistent and totally incapable of maintaining trust." Information is often hard to find in the country of over 9 million people, where infection rates have broken records and daily deaths per capita are among the highest in the world.Īlthough Hungary has secured vaccine doses from China and Russia in addition to those provided by the European Union, nearly a third of its adults still have not received a single shot. Above, people sit on the outside terrace of a bar in Budapest, Hungary, on April 24, 2021. "We could have known which cities and which counties had particularly virulent infections."Īs coronavirus infections and deaths soar in Hungary, the country's journalists and public health professionals are demanding more detailed data on the outbreak from the government, with some experts saying that greater transparency might boost lagging vaccination rates. "If there had been more data.the responses would have been much more effective," Falus said. In addition to regional statistics, experts have requested data on how many hospitalized COVID-19 patients have been vaccinated.Īndras Falus, immunologist and professor emeritus at Semmelweis University in Budapest, told AP that a lot of Hungarians no longer pay attention to the data they are given because it has been so "inconsistent and unreliable" in the past. When the government refused to release more detailed data, journalists began entering COVID-19 wards in hospitals to get their own, until the government banned it. Illes Szurovecz, who works for Hungarian news site 444.hu, told the Associated Press that if he and fellow journalists were not recording trends, "it would be virtually impossible to look back in Hungary today and see how the pandemic has gone." It also doesn't provide any visual tools such as graphs and maps, leaving many Hungarian journalists to try to create their own. While the government's website lists the number of new infections, hospitalizations, ventilator uses and deaths, it does not break down the numbers by region. Hungarian journalists and health workers are calling for clearer COVID-19 statistics from the government, which they claim has been withholding regional information as infections continue to climb.