COVID-19: 38 dead, 426 new cases in Hungary

The vaccination drive continued over the weekend as the number of Hungarians who have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine is 4,639,299, and 2,727,165 of them have already got their second jab.

This means 47.5% of the population has got at least on dose and 27.9% has received both.

The number of new cases was 426 in the past 24 hours, increasing the total since last March to 798,573.

The virus claimed 38 lives yesterday, bringing the death toll to 29,213.

There are now 2,259 coronavirus patients in hospital, with 258 of them on ventilator.

The number of tests applied in the past 24 hours was 10,365, only 4.1% of which came back positive, further confirming that the pandemic is receding in Hungary.

The following charts show that the fewer tests authorities perform, the higher the number of recovered people goes.

The top two charts show the same set of figures, only the yellow area on the right-hand chart, depicting the number of people that recovered from COVID-19, is from top to bottom.

The trend on the second one is clear: the more tests they perform (blue), the lower the number of recoveries go (yellow). The same phenomenon can be seen on the l-h chart, by the way, only in the form of ‘ridges’ running parallel with each other up to April. Then there’s a sharp divergence. One of the ridges becomes a precipice, the other turns into a steeply ascending cliff.

This abrupt change is shown on the third chart by the yellow line skyrocketing to over 50% from around 5% over a bit more than a month. (The fluctuations over the last 7 days were between 47.4% and 51.5%.)

Our hypothesis is that most of the daily tests are done with samples taken from people waiting to be discharged from hospitals, while authorities are also trying to perform as few tests as possible, i.e. only those that show severe symptoms get tested for COVID-19. They are making room for 'regular' patients, transforming emergency COVID-19 wards and ICUs back to what they were before the entire health care system went on red alert due to a resurgence of SARS-CoV-2 cases.

The fourth chart also shows how hospitals are switching back to business as usual, and keep discharging recovered COVID-19 patients or those that no longer need hospital care and can continue their recovery at home.

People in hospital with coronavirus infection make up only 1.7% of active cases.

, which is extremely low ratio, especially in view of the fact that the UK variant (B.1.1.7) is not only more infectious but also causes more severe symptoms. Only two months ago, 6 to 7% of active cases were in hospital.

Also note that about 12% of people in hospitals with coronavirus infection have required mechanical ventilation over the past month, while the ratio was around half of that between November 2020 and February 2021. The conclusion is that only those get admitted to COVID-19 wards who are in serious condition. The ratio was around 12% also when nearly six times as many people were in hospitals with coronavirus infection. Up until a week ago, there were still about 100 COVID-19 deaths per day in Hungary (there were 38 dead on Sunday), while coronavirus-related fatalities were "only" twice as highwhen there were four times more (cc. 12,000) people in hospitals.

Cover photo: Jonne Roriz/Bloomberg via Getty Images