The COVID-19 restrictions currently in force until March 22 in Hungary have been extended for "at least" another week, the country's Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on public radio MR1 on Friday.

"It would have been easier to extend the restrictions for two weeks, but a lot can change within a week, so action has now been taken for a week for the time being," he said.

The decision came as the country reported a new record 10,759 COVID-19 cases in 24 hours. The national total of confirmed infections now stands at 549,839.

In the past 24 hours, a record number of 213 people have died from the disease, taking the cumulative toll to 17,841 in the country. Meanwhile, 364,808 people have recovered from the disease. Currently, 10,264 patients are hospitalized, including 1,174 on ventilators, according to the government's coronavirus information website.

As of Friday, 1,477,554 Hungarians had received at least one shot of a vaccine, while 444,451 had two jabs, according to the website.

"Increasing the vaccination rate is essential to controlling the pandemic," Orban stressed, adding that each week, four to five times as many people are being vaccinated as are getting infected.

He said that the country could be gradually reopened once all registered people over the age of 65 are vaccinated.

"This is realistic when we will have reached a total of 2.5 million people inoculated, and we are now at around 1.5 million," he said.

Currently, Hungary uses vaccines from five producers including China's Sinopharm.

The country, the first European Union member state to buy and authorize the use of Chinese vaccines, started to administer the Sinopharm vaccine on February 24.