Economy 30 December 2020, 9:20am

COVID-19 in Hungary: nearly 2,000 new cases on Tuesday

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Hungarian authorities confirmed 1,972 new coronavirus (COVID-19) cases on Tuesday, bringing the total since March to 319,543. The death toll rose to 9,429 after the disease claimed the lives of 137, mostly elderly or chronic, patients in the past 24 hours, the official government website said. The number of active cases is 165,880, with 6,155 coronavirus patients in hospital and 425 on ventilators.

The low case numbers of recent days may have been due to fewer tests during the Christmas period, as yesterday again brought nearly 2,000 new confirmed infections compared to less than 1,000 in preceding days.

The number of fatalities also rose again and is the highest seen in a week.

The number of active cases has decreased to 166,000 according to official data. The number of “actual” active infections is better seen in the 14-day moving average of new cases:

The higher daily case number does not mean that the virus is spreading faster, just that more tests were applied: the number of tests was 18,000 yesterday, compared to between 3,000 and 9,000 in recent days. The positivity rate fell to about 10%.