Hungary has confirmed its first two cases of the Wuhan coronavirus, spread to the country by a pair of Iranian students.
“Hungary has all the personnel, facilities and regulations in place to handle the situation,” promised Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who had previously predicted that the arrival of coronavirus in his country was inevitable.
“We knew all along that – sooner or later – it would reach Europe because in our modern world it’s not only goods and people, but also viruses that can flow freely,” he said at an emergency meeting of leaders from the Visegrad Group of anti-mass migration, relatively eurosceptic Central European government leaders in Prague, Czechia.
“We have identified two types of threats: One concerns public health and the other has to do with the economy,” he continued.
“Today, we dealt with the public health concern. [Czech] Prime Minister [Andrej] Babiš is right: People are much more important than money or the economy.”
Hungary has taken more robust action on the coronavirus than many other European countries, risking — and receiving — the ire of the left-liberal international media by announcing it has suspended all asylum applications on an indefinite basis.
“We observe a certain link between coronavirus and illegal migrants,” said Gyorgy Bakondi , the government’s national security adviser.
The move comes as the Islamist government in Turkey has said its border into Europe are now open, leading to violent clashes with Greek border forces and thousands of would-be migrants.
Many of the migrants are from Iran, which has been struck particularly hard by the coronavirus, with the government admitting that its health secretary, many parliamentarians, and even a senior adviser to Ayatollah Khamenei, the country’s theocratic dictator, having contracted the virus.
Moreover, the adviser, Mohammad Mirmohammadi, is confirmed to have been killed by his infection.