Economy 19 March 2021, 9:26am

COVID-19 in Hungary: new peaks in all statistics

Portfolio

Hungarian authorities confirmed 10,759 new coronavirus (COVID-19) cases in the past 2 hours, increasing the total since last March to 549,839. As Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced earlier today, the number of fatalities set a new record at 213. There are 10,264 coronavirus patients in hospital, with 1,174 of them on ventilators, indicating that the peak of the third wave is near. The number of people vaccinated is 1,477,554, and 444,451 of them have already received the second shot as well.

The number of new cases has been relatively low in recent days, so the seven-day moving average began to show a declining trend. Meanwhile, it was known that this has been partly due to lower test numbers during the long weekend, so no further decrease was expected, but today’s new daily gih is still a surprise. Taking the latency of the virus into account, we can say that an increasing ratio of these new cases are infections from after the 8 March lockdown.

It is possible that the high daily figure is partly due to some kind of latency in the system, and cases undetected over the three-day weekend have now surfaced and boosted the statistics. Portfolio was expecting this to happen yesterday, when it did not. Virus statistics in coming days will be of key importance, as there will be no major interruption in the data stream until Easter. For the time being, the contradiction of a high in daily new cases while the seven-day average is below the peak means it is impossible to tell how much the lockdown introduced on 8 March helped contain the outbreak.

The number of new cases in the past 24 hours was 10,759. The total number of infections in the past year is 549,839.

The disease claimed the lives of 213, mostly elderly or chronic, patients yesterday, bringing the death toll to 17,841.

The number of coronavirus patients in hospital and on ventilators are also at new record highs at 10,264 and 1,174, respectively.

In Hungary’s ongoing vaccination drive, 1,477,554 citizens have received the first hot of a vaccine and 444,451 the second one. Vaccination coverage is now at 15.1% and 4,6%, respectively.