The Hungarian government modified on Wednesday its ordnance published the previous Sunday on the green, amber and red designation of countries with respect to their coronavirus infection status, news portal Origo reports.
The original ordnance came into effect on Wednesday. It meant in effect that Hungary has established quarantine requirements for most non-EU countries, putting the Balkans countries -with the exception of Serbia and Croatia – in the red zone, together with Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova, Belarus and much of the rest of the world, except the United States, Japan, China, Norway and the United Kingdom which are in the amber zone.
Its three southern and eastern fellow EU member states (Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania) are in the amber zone. Foreign nationals from amber countries can only enter Hungary if they have a fresh negative coronavirus test, or be placed in a 14-day quarantine. From the red zone only Hungarian nationals are allowed to enter the country, but they will also be placed in mandatory quarantine.
Wednesday’s amendment of the original ordnance says that the country’s chief medical officer – in line with regional infection levels – can declare certain regions of otherwise red or amber countries to be green zones, thus exempting of quarantine obligations travelers coming from those zones. Most countries surrounding Hungary have recently had major secondary spikes in the number of fresh coronavirus cases, while in Hungary the infection graph has remained flat. It was not immediately clear how authorities will enforce the new regulation.
Coronavirus cases in Romania
Title image: Passenger control at the southern Röszke border crossing with Serbia. (Origo/Sándor Csuday)
