Economy 26 August 2021, 1:57pm

Hospital head physician on mandatory Covid vaccination, mask-wearing

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Gábor Zacher, head physician of the Hatvan hospital, would not make vaccination against COVID-19 mandatory, but he would bring back compulsory mask-wearing. In an interview with növekedés.hu, he also said Hungary is not doing well at the rate of vaccinations.

Zacher said making Covid shots compulsory is a possible took but he would not agree with such a measure.

I believe it all hinges on communication. Honest, straightforward and comperehensible communication that the virologist in Pécs have on their Facebook page

It clearly won't do if they have well-known people promoting vaccination which, by the way, really has no alternative when it comes to preventing this disease, he added.

In order to prevent the spread of the virus it would be important to bring back mandatory mask-wearing indoors

, he stressed.

In order to understand the importanc of covering our faces, he recommends watching at least a single video recorded by staff of one of the world's leading medical paper, the New England Journal of Medicine. In this 41-second video you can clearly see what happens to droplets during speech (mind you, not even when you sneeze!) when you don a mask and when you don't.

Zacher noted that for a while Hungary was doing well in terms of vaccinations, but it is now falling behind.

And if this does not change, more people die of coronavirus

, he said, reminding that Hungary is second behind Peru as for the number of COVID-19 per one million population.

He said when he meets patients that are not inoculated against SARS-CoV-2, he always asks why, but he has never received a response that he could accept either from a professional or from a human point of view.

Zacher added that although not all of these people had accepted his arguments, but a lot of them changed their mind and promised to get vaccinated. He even accompanied some to a vaccination location.

As regards the fear of side effects from a COVID-19 vaccine, the toxicologist stressed that if a drug or vaccine does no have any side effect, it has no effect, either.

When reminded that a lot of people working in health care also refuse to get their shots, he said this was true, but

it's not worth playing chess with a pigeon.

He reiterated what he had been saying in the spring, namely that the press should be allowed in COVID-19 wards and make it clear for the general public that

Hello people, you can die from this!

Zacher also said that as the pandemic petered out, emergecy care services returned to normal, but

emergency care in the capital city has fallen again. There is an awful lot of patients and it remains true that not a small percentage of them do not belong to emergency care.

We should at last get the message through what emergency services is actually about and what it is not, he added, stressing the importance of clear communication again.