Economy 11 August 2021, 5:20pm

School starts in three weeks, only a quarter of Hungarian children aged 12-17 got COVID-19 shots

Portfolio

No more than 200,000 adolescents in the 590,000-strong age 12-17 group have registered for a COVID-19 vaccine, and 162,000 of them have received a shot of vaccine by Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna (the only two vaccines administered to children). A new school year will kick off in three weeks, while hardly more than a quarter of them are protected (to some extent) against coronavirus.

Odd things about the release of the new data

It was interesting to follow the process of this particular data release. The official government portal published the supposedly updated figures on Wednesday morning, which showed that 152,000 of the 189,000 registered adolescents have been vaccinated. (Here’s a cached version of that dated 3 August, 17:17. Why not the original? Because it was removed.) Then the article was updated and re-released in the afternoon, showing that 162,000 of the 200,000 people that registered in the 12-17 age group received their COVID-19 shot so far.

Let’s put the numbers into perspective!

According to 2021 data provided by the Central Statistical Office (KSH), there are 590,000 people in the 12-17 age group, which means that only 27.44% of them (162,000) have been vaccinated so far.

This means that slightly more than a quarter of adolescents under the age of 18 have been inoculated against coronavirus in Hungary.

We would love to see how the government plans to give a boost to this figure before school starts in three weeks.

Parents who want their child(ren) to be inoculated need to register and then book an appointment at either the GP (theirs or their children’s) or a vaccination location in a hospital. Vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are administered to the 12-17 age group in Hungary.

In case registration and/or the booking of an appointment fails (which should not come as a shock considering the repeated past fiascos of the online vaccination administration system) schools will open in late August or early September for those children that want to receive their shots. Parents will be notified of these events in time.

The Trade Union of Teachers (PSz) warned that it will be too late to inoculate children at the end of August. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced in mid-July that the cabinet is organising a vaccination campaign for children over 12 for the days before school starts.

It’s really a mystery why they have to wait until then, when it is common knowledge that it takes two to three weeks after the first dose to develop some kind of immunity and then about another 14 days after the second dose to build full immunity against COVID-19.