Number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Hungary reaches 300

With 39 people testing positive by Friday morning, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Hungary reached 300 according to the government's coronavirus website.  

The website also announced that there are now 34 people who have recovered from COVID-19, meaning six people have tested negative and will be released from the hospital.

The newly diagnosed patients are all Hungarian citizens, but there is no further official information available on them. The website summarizes that 286 Hungarian, 10 Iranian, 2 British, 1 Kazakh, and 1 Vietnamese national have tested positive so far in the country.

On Friday morning, the Hungarian government announced a two-week lockdown to slow down the spread of the virus, effective from Saturday. There is a wide range of exceptions from the stay-at-home order, see our list here:

At the beginning of the week, Chief Medical Officer Cecília Müller said there are no counties in Hungary where the virus is not present, and there are several cases with no symptoms whatsoever. There is no estimate as to how many people the coronavirus could infect in Hungary, "experts are creating models, but this is guesswork," Müller said.

She also announced that they began taking samples from people hospitalised with pneumonia of unknown origin, but added that this is the end of the flu season, and pneumonia is one of the possible complications of that disease.

Find all we know about the cases in Hungary here, and see our file for all of our English articles on the epidemiological situation in Hungary:

(Cover: István Huszti / Index)