Economy 8 January 2021, 10:40am

COVID-19: Nearly 3,000 new cases, 115 deaths in Hungary

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Hungarian authorities diagnosed 2.907 people with coronavirus infection over the past 24 hours, which means the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases is up at 337,743 in the country. 115 people have died of coronavirus-related diseases, taking the death toll to 10,440. The number of people that recovered from the infection has been rising and is now up at 186,449. There are 140,854 active cases, 5,297 COVID-19 patients in hospital, with 372 of them on ventilators. Health care workers are getting their COVID-19 vaccine at 25 locations, and authorities are also starting to inoculate the residents and staff of nursing homes.

The 2,907 new confirmed cases suggests that the descending trend has halted. The jump may owe to several factors, including people returning to their workplace after the holidays; parties on New Year's Eve despite the curfew and a mandatory 10-person cap at gatherings; or more COVID-19 tests performed. More educated conclusions cannot be drawn from a few days' statistics, though.

The number of deaths also remains high, unfortunately. If the uptick in the number of new cases is evidence to a faster spread of coronavirus, we should not expect a marked decline in mortality numbers any time soon, either.

The number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals dropped over the previous day to 5,297 from 5,387, and the descending trend seems to be holding here. There are 372 coronavirus patients on ventilators, five more than on the preceding day.

Authorities performed relatively a lot of COVID-19 tests over the past 24 hours (24,000), more than during the holidays. The positivity rate came in at 12% which may be lower than the average of the previous weeks but marks a rise compared to the previous days.