Published: 3.2.2023
„The Fidesz government and the institutions under it were at pains to prove during the covid epidemic that they were in complete control of the situation. In contrast, an official document now proves that there was complete chaos over the management of data”, said MEP István Ujhelyi, member of the EP’s Public Health Committee, at an online press conference in Brussels on Thursday.
The politician based his statements on an investigation report by the National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, which he received after he initiated formal proceedings against the relevant government institutions over the handling of covid data that was withheld despite repeated public interest requests. Ujhelyi stressed that during the epidemic, which caused the deaths of nearly 50,000 Hungarians, all healthcare workers performed at a superhuman level and tried to save lives under the circumstances, and that the scandalous data handling was therefore the fault of the responsible government that was in charge of them.
The founder of the Community of Chance recalled during the online briefing that during the epidemic, the government was constantly secretive and evasive about the vaccination records of patients who needed hospitalization for covid, or ventilator care. In fact, Ujhelyi pointed out, the government regularly engaged in self-contradiction at the time about whether the data were available or who the data controller was. „Even then, it was clear that the government was not in control of the situation, and data management was in a state of chaos, which the government was trying to compensate for with arrogance and unlawful data withholding,” István Ujhelyi stated.
The politician said that he was „fed up with this” and filed a complaint with the National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (NAIH), which conducted a detailed investigation into the legality of data management. In the multi-page report, based on consultations with the institutions concerned, it was established that the epidemiological system was not adequately prepared to handle the significant increase in data volume caused by the epidemic and that, despite the redeployment of staff, „it became clear already during the first wave that the National Centre for Public Health (NNK) could not provide the daily data service required.” Referring to the NAIH report, Ujhelyi said that during the investigation, the NNK admitted that IT problems had arisen from September 2020 and that it was a „serious difficulty that the same staff had to carry out contact research and issue warrants who should have validated the data.” It turned out that at the beginning of the pandemic, there were only nine specialists with specific skills in the NNK who could manage the communicable disease reporting system and there was no time to recruit or train new staff; therefore, there was a lot of pressure on these existing specialists. The NNK also acknowledged, according to the report, that the fact that doctors and health workers had to record covid patient data manually had significantly increased errors due to incorrect data entry and clerical inaccuracy. Ujhelyi also quoted the report as saying that „covid infection as a cause of death was entered into the system with a high error rate; the number of incorrect data exceeded thirty per cent.”
At the press conference, the MEP also said that during the investigation of the fulfillment or refusal of the data request, NAIH had also established on the basis of the answers and explanations received from the institutions that despite the NNK having the vaccination data of individuals, it had not collected data on hospital inpatients nor on covid patients requiring mechanical ventilation, the latter of which, despite being in the Electronic Health Service Space (EESZT), could not be reconciled and thus, as they wrote, „reliable data in an individualized, queryable form” was simply not available.
István Ujhelyi said that the NNK had at the time refused to provide him with the vaccination data of patients who had died of covid on the grounds that the data were in two separate databases, which they were not obliged to merge under an amendment to the Constitution because of the excessive workload it entailed. „Oddly, the data protection authority’s investigation found that the NNC has since validated the data, meaning that the dataset that they refused to collect for me at the time is now available. We have requested it again accordingly and, lo and behold, Cecília Müller sent us the full document yesterday, some 1000 pages. My colleagues and I will review the data and publish the lessons learned,” said István Ujhelyi. The MEP added that according to one of the final findings of the NAIH’s investigation report, the NNK led by Cecília Müller reported to the DPA that a „more reliable system for recording covid data” will be introduced from 2023 and that the current communicable disease reporting system is being revamped to provide more error screening possibilities and to make data processing easier.
„In summary, the government was prepared for everything during the epidemic but the epidemic. What we have seen and suspected before has been confirmed: the government was in total chaos during the covid outbreak, and instead of providing honest and accurate information, they resorted to sly attacks, secrecy and cheap propaganda. The question rightly arises, for example, how could the Hungarian government have been sure of making the right decisions if it did not necessarily have all the information it required and was not in possession of all the credible data? It is clear that Cecilia Müller is unfit to do her job and the minimum that can be expected is that she apologizes to the public for having concealed the truth about the covid data, its availability and its usability. It is clear and obvious that the political leadership of the health sector failed the covid test, and the responsibility for this lies with the leaders of Fidesz, and the fact that Miklós Kásler’s ministerial term and the EMMI (Ministry of Human Capacities) are now a thing of the past does not change this”, said MEP István Ujhelyi in his online press conference.
The video of the press conference can be viewed here (in Hungarian):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5ZcGwLXMAQ
Budapest/Brussels – 02/02/2023