Economy 21 December 2020, 8:56am

COVID-19: over 2,000 new cases, 183 deaths in Hungary

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Hungarian authorities diagnosed 2,141 people with coronavirus infection over the past 24 hours, taking the total to 305,130. 183 people have died ofcoronavirus-related diseases, and so the death toll is up at 8,282, while 102,962 COVID-19 patients have already recovered, according to data published by the official government portal. The number of active cases went down by 3,561 to 193,886. There are 7,097 coronavirus patients in hospital (up from 7,022 a day earlier), with 517 of them on ventilators (down from 520).

The volatility in the number of new daily confirmed cases remains high. It was over 4,000 only two days ago and 2,141 new cases were diagnosed in the past 24 hours. The trend, however, shows a deceleration which is promising, but we should definitely not lull ourselves into a false sense of security. Complacency literally kills in this case.

In the past 24 hours, 183 people have died of coronavirus-related diseases which is close to the all-time high, and we see no descending trend here despite a drop in the number of new daily cases. It is evident that it takes a while for the number of daily COVID-19 deaths to drop after the number of new daily cases starts to fall, but the early December decline should have been reflected in the number of fatalities by now.

There may be several reasons why it hasn't. With a lot of senior citizens contracting the virus the share of cases with serious symptoms rises within the total number of cases. it is also possible that in the overloaded health care system not every patient in severe condition gets diagnosed with coronavirus infection, and when they die they officially die for other causes and they never get registered as coronavirus patients. This could explain the excess mortality too. We can only have educated guesses in this respect, though.

There are currently 7,097 coronavirus patients in hospital (vs. 7,022 a day earlier), with 517 of them requiring artificial ventilation.

The lower number of new confirmed COVID-19 cases is explained also by the smaller number of samples tested. The official government portal reported 15,000 new tests for the past 24 hours, which compares with 24,000 on the previous day. This would not automatically lead to fewer confirmed cases, though. There could be an inverse link too: the lower the number of suspected COVID-19 cases, the fewer tests are performed.

That is why the positivity rate should be examined more closely. It shows whether or not authorities underdetect cases relative to the preceding day. There was a growth of a single percentage point in the share of tests that came back positive yesterday, which might signal a smaller number of suspicious cases. This could show a moderation in the spread of coronavirus but it is definitely too early to draw such a conclusion with certainty. It is also reassuring, however, that the number of people in mandatory home quarantine declined by nearly 9,000.