The so far fastest-spreading variant of the COVID-19 virus, Omicron, has reached Hungary, officials said on Monday.
“The virus variant called Omicron has also appeared in Hungary,” chief medical officer Cecília Müller said on national television channel M1 on Monday.
A new PCR test from Neumann Labs Diagnostic Laboratory, launched this year, has recently shown the presence of an Omicron coronavirus variant, the laboratory said in a statement.
“The mutation infected a married couple whose members did not visit abroad, so they certainly got the disease at home. In addition to the couple’s confirmed Omicron infection, the Hungarian laboratory is also investigating other suspicious cases,” they wrote.
However, according to Cecília Müller, the Delta variant is still the dominant virus in Hungary, accounting for nearly 100 percent of current diseases.
“It was only a matter of time before the latest version of the coronavirus from South Africa, omicron, reached Hungary. To date, our laboratory has demonstrated the presence of the Omicron variant in two subjects, which was confirmed by experts from the National Center for Public Health. All this presumably means that this variant may have infected several people in Hungary already, ”Miklós Nyíri, the managing director of Neumann Labs, pointed out.
According to the latest data, there are 170,416 active cases in Hungary, with a population of just under 10 million. The inoculation rate is 67 percent, just under the European Union average.
