Hungary will probably only return to pre-pandemic conditions around the end of next year, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said on Monday when handing out the appointments to the leaders of the newly created National Hospitals Directorate. Before the end of 2021, “we won’t be over the crisis,” the prime minister stressed, adding that there may be easier stages after the first dose of the vaccine and then after the vaccine arrives en masse, “but by the time everything returns to normal, it will take at least a full year”. He called the duties of the Director General of the National Hospitals Directorate and his deputies “the pinnacle of medical, health management work”, and then thanked them for taking on the difficult, highly responsible task. In order for hospitals to function well, the heads of institutions and those who manage them must present skills that are not otherwise the strengths of the Hungarian public administration, said Orbán, who called the culture of cooperation the most important.
The leaders of the National Hospitals Directorate must work together with the prime minister, the head of the operational staff, and the minister in charge of professional management, he stressed. He added that after the members of the government, it may be that the heads of the general directorate will have to work hardest in the entire Hungarian state administration. “In times of crisis, standing at such a difficult point on the dam as where you will be standing in the coming months is both a difficult but an honorable task. The trust of the whole country is in you… Don’t forget, all life matters, ”Orbán said at the event also attended by Minister of the Interior Sándor Pintér and Miklós Kásler, Minister of Human Resourcest. The leader of the new institution is Zoltán Jenei, who was previously the economic director of the Somogy County Police Headquarters, and later the chancellor of the University of Pécs
Title image: Prime Minister Viktor Orbán (L) appoints Zoltán Jenei as head of the National Hospitals Directorate on December 21, 2020 in BUdapest. (MTI/Szilárd Koszticsák)
