Economy 7 January 2021, 10:50am

COVID-19: New cases at two-week high in Hungary

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Hungarian authorities diagnosed 3,068 people with coronavirus infection over the past 24 hours, which takes the official number of COVID-19 infections in the country to 334,836. 127 people have died of coronavirus-related diseases on Wednesday, taking the death toll to 10,325, the official government portal reported on Thursday morning. Oddly enough, the number of people that recovered from COVID-19 has not changed, and coronavirus press centre plans to release an update on that on Friday.

koronavírus járvány korona maszk védőruha

Daily coronavirus statistics are usually released between 8 and 9 A.M., but today they were published after 10.

The data show that the number of new daily confirmed cases (3,068) has not been this high for two weeks since 24 December. And let's not forget that the government temporarily lifted the curfew on Christmas Eve, so it is possible that the current figures reflect the impact of a larger number of contacts then. The current daily figure is well over the seven-day moving average of 1,760.

We should also highlight that

the 7-day moving average of confirmed covid-19 cases shows an ascending trend again.

127 people have died of coronavirus-related diseases over the past 24 hours, also a two-week high and the second-highest figure this year. The two-week average number of deaths was 112 and the stats from the last few days show that the descending trend has come to a stop.

The official government portal said the number of recovered patients remains unchanged compared to a day earlier (179,541) due to technical difficulties, and that an update will be provided on Friday.

The number of active cases rose to 144,970 from 142,029, breaking a 19-day descending trend, but this obviously has to do with the technical difficulty affecting the number of people that have already recovered from their coronavirus infection.

And finally, a favourable change. The number of coronavirus patients in hospital dropped further to 5,387, which is the lowest figure since early November, i.e. a two-month record low. The number of patients on ventilators is also at a two-month low at 367.

With the number of new daily confirmed cases up and the number of COVID-19 patients in hospital down we may draw the conclusion that this is yet another wave in the pandemic, a resurgence in new cases that will be reflected in the number of hospitalised patients with a delay. We should not jump to conclusions just yet, so let's wait a few more days to see this issue more clearly.