Economy 2 May 2022, 12:55pm

Hungary widens gap between COVID-19 report dates

Portfolio

Hungary's government portal dealing with coronavirus-related matters said on Monday that it will change the pace of reporting of pandemic-related statistics.

The portal has not been publishing data for the weekends since mid-June 2021, only the aggregate figures for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday on Mondays. The change was implemented due to improving epidemiological data, but the 'old ways' were not restored even when the pandemic flared up again in the autumn.

Now a new change is being implemented. As of May, koronavirus.gov.hu will release COVID-19 statistics only once a week.

Naturally, it does not say when the data will be released (presumably on Mondays), and whether it will be aggregate figures for one week (likely) or a daily breakdown for every day of the previous week (unlikely).

Before saying goodbye to these reports for a while, here are a couple of graphs showing the key statistics in the pandemic, such as positivity rates (and their specific percentages), as well as the number of people with COVID-19 in hospital and on ventilator, the number of Covid deaths and key changes in these numbers.

As of 1 May, 46,266 people died of coronavirus-related diseases in Hungary since the outbreak in the spring of 2020, according to official government figures.

It's a devastatingly high figure. Hungary is fourth (or third, if you disregard Bosnia and Herzegovina with a population one third of Hungary's own) in the world in terms of Covid deaths per one million population. The first is Peru (6,295), followed by Bulgaria (5,387), Bosnia and Herzegovina (4,860), and Hungary (4,812).