Economy 4 May 2021, 9:29am

COVID-19: Fewer than 1,000 new cases in Hungary

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Hungarian authorities diagnosed 726 people with coronavirus infection over the past 24 hours, taking the total to 784,837, the official government portal reported on Tuesday. 137 people have died of coronavirus-related diseases; the death toll is up at 28,045. Hungary continues to have the world's highest number of COVID-19 deaths per one million population (2,909). More than 4.7 million Hungarians have registered to get vaccinated and 80% of them have already received their shot. A total of 4,099,495 people received their first and 2,157,637 their second jab.

The last time Hungary had so few new confirmed cases was on 2 February when the 'third wave' was still in an ascending trend. Today's reading shows the usual Tuesday decline which has to do with the weekend impact, when authorities perform very few tests and fewer people turn to their doctor or go to hospital with symptoms. The trend remains descneding, though, with the number of new cases down 42% w/w.

The number of daily deaths has risen from a day earlier, but the downward trend continues. COVID-19 deaths tend to follow changes in new daily confirmed cases with a couple of weeks of delay, and we should soon start to see fewer than 100 fatailities per day.

The problem is the easing of lockdown measures, the re-opening of schools, terraces, cinemas, theatres, sport events, and that mask-wearing is no longer mandatory for those that have immunity certificats. Experts say the re-opening was premature and warned that it could trigger a resurgence in COVID-19 cases. The first impacts should be reflected in the statistics by the third week or the end of May.

There are 4,739 COVID-19 patients in hospital (-133 d/d), with 549 of them on ventilators (-23).

Authorities performed an extremely low number of tests (8,400), 8.6% of which were positive.

Hungary never excelled in terms of tests (it’s 67th in the world in respect of COVID-19 tests per one million population), but it started to reduce testing severely around Easter. Meanwhile, the ratio of recovered COVID-19 patients to tests leaped to 33% from 5% (7-day average). What a coincidence, huh?

When there are fewer than 20,000 to 25,000 tests per day, the number of active cases drops. Whenever more tests are performed, we have an increase in active cases. The average number of tests performed in April was over 24,000. The correlation is this: the fewer tests they have, the more people are deemed recovered. This has been the trend since 1 January.