Economy 6 January 2021, 9:17am

COVID-19: Number of new cases jump in Hungary

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Hungarian authorities diagnosed 2,047 people with coronavirus infection over the past 24 hours, a lot more than in the previous four days. The total number of infected people has reached 331,768, and 118 people have died of coronavirus-related diseases, taking the death toll to 10,198, the official government portal reported on Wednesday morning.

The 2,047 new cases is a higher figure than we saw over the preceding four days and it also exceeds the 1,746 seven-day average, but it does not stand out, as testing was put on the back burner during the holidays.

118 people have died officially of coronavirus-related diseases over the past 24 hours, which is the second-highest number this year. The average of the last seven days is 110 daily fatalities.

The number of people that recovered from COVID-19 is up at 179,541, while the number of active cases dropped by 1,036 to 142,029. The decline of the latter was 16% over the past week and 18% over the past month, which suggests that the restrictions in place are working.

There are currently 5,646 coronavirus patients in hospital, with 396 of them on ventilators. The numbers show an 8% and 7% week-on-week decline, respectively. Compared to a month ago, there are now 27% fewer coronavirus patients in hospital and 40% fewer on ventilators.

Health care workers are receiving their COVID-19 vaccinations at 25 locations and the inoculation of the residents and staff of retirement homes has also started.

And let's see the testing statistics! Reliability is not the first word that comes to mind when you look at these. On Tuesday morning, the official government portal reported 27,265 tests performed and today's report shows 1,985 tests for the past 24 hours. The positivity rate would be over 100% for yesterday. The previous day's high figure may have to do with the targeted testing (rapid antigen tests) of teachers at the start of the year, which could also have to do with the higher number of new confirmed cases. But this is only an educated guess, as the authorities do not endulge the public with such futile information. Data combined for the past two days give us a positivity rate of 10%. (We deliberately omitted today's spike from the chart below.)