Economy 18 December 2020, 9:57am

COVID-19 in Hungary: 4,428 new cases on Thursday

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Hungarian authorities confirmed 4,428 new coronavirus (COVID-19) infections on Wednesday, increasing the total since March to 295,977. The death toll rose to 7,725 after the disease claimed the lives of 187, mostly elderly or chronic, patients. The number of recoveries is now at 89,814, while the number of active cases is 198,438. There are currently 7,335 coronavirus patients in hospital, with 564 of them on ventilators, the official government website said.

The 4,428 new cases are more than in the previous few days but remain well below the 6,000s seen in earlier weeks. Up to yesterday, the trend was definitely falling, so this may be an outlier. There is significant volatility in daily new cases, so no conclusion should be drawn from a single day.

As for fatalities, the daily figure is unfortunately very high and is close to the peak level. There was also a trend-like decrease in recent days here that we had been hoping would last. However, as daily case numbers have been lower in recent days, it should be reflected soon in fatalities as well.

The number of people treated in hospital continued to decrease in the past 24 hours. While part of this was unfortunately due to high fatalities, the number of coronavirus patients admitted to hospital was lower than that of those leaving hospital, indicating a slowing of the outbreak.

The relatively high case number compared to previous day may also have been due to the large number of tests, more than 32,000, applied. Again, we do not know how many of those were PCR or antigen tests, or if there were extra antigen tests taken above the daily sampling. Nevertheless, the raw data suggest a positivity rate of 13%, an improvement that again indicates a slowing spread of the virus.