Economy 3 June 2021, 11:44am

COVID-19: 318 new cases, 18 dead in Hungary

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Over the past 24 hours, Hungarian authorities diagnosed 315 people with SARS-CoV-2 and 18 people died of coronavirus-related diseases, according to official statistics reported by the government portal koronavirus.gov.hu. The death toll is up at 29,792, and officially 805,302 people have been infected with coronavirus since the outbreak last spring. There are 739 COVID-19 patients in hospital, with 77 of them on ventilator.

315 new cases were diagnosed on Wednesday, more than than in the preceding days, but fewer than a week ago. The third wave in the pandemic is apparently petering out, and so far the emergence of the Indian variant (B.1.617) has not affected the course of the pandemic.

18 people died of coronavirus-related diseases over the past 24 hours, which also shows a downward trend. On Monday, Peru more than doubled its official coronavirus death toll (5,538 per 1 mn people on 3 June), dethroning Hungary (3,091) as the country with the highest COVID-19 mortality per capita anywhere in the world. The government of the country of about 33 million people said it had raised the count from 69,342 to 180,764 on the advice of a panel of health experts, which found there had been an undercount.

As the pandemic is receding, so is the number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals (-98 d/d) and on ventilators (-13 d/d).

Take a look at a couple of charts on the number of active cases, people with coronavirus infection in hospitals and on ventilators, in all kinds of aspects and ratios, using 3-day and 7-day averages.

The following two charts show daily readings and 3-day averages of these. There is (or rather was) a red flag on the left-hand chart, namely that the curve showing the number of COVID-19 patients in hospital and requiring mechanical ventilation has started to flatten at the end of May, i.e. the rate of the decline was switching to stagnation. It now seems that the decline continues, though, and both the raw figures and the 3-day averages dropped further. Over the past week, the number of people infected with coronavirus in hospitals dropped by about 380 and there are 44 fewer of them on ventilator.

The right-hand chart shows the ratio of those in hospital to active cases and those on ventilator to those in hospital. The general observation is that the former figure has been dropping all month, but there seemed to be stagnation at the end of May, and the other ratio has been hovering between 11 and 13% throughout last month. However, it did drop further to 10.4% yesterday, and the 3-day average also fell to 10.6%.

Here are the same figures, only with 7-day averages.

Keeping track of the changes

The calculations in the following charts are based on 7-day averages.

The first chart shows ratios of 7-day averages: [the 7-day average of a given day – 7-day average of the previous day] / 7-day average of the previous day.

What we see is that the number of active cases has been dropping more than the number of those in hospital, i.e. when we see increases in the number of recoveries from coronavirus, it’s mostly because GPs are reporting them. (The shifts in the number of COVID-19 patients in hospital and on ventilator have been largely in tandem, but we see a divergence in the last two days.)

The following chart, shows the ratios of the changes (curves) you see above. The blue line: orange/green, i.e. change in the number of hospitalised COVID-19 patients per change in active cases (with 7-day averages). Red line: blue/orange (on ventilator, 7-day average) / in hospital (7-day average). Wherever the ratios are over 100% (everywhere), the numerator is larger than the denominator, i.e. the rate at which they discharge Covid patients from hospitals (including those that are reported recovered by GPs) is higher than the rate at which the number of active cases is dropping. This means that an ever smaller percentage of active cases are in hospital.

The above changes have to do with the following: GPs reporting a whole lot of recoveries, authorities performed an exceptionally low number of tests (3,436), which also led to a spike in the positifity rate (9.2% vs. 1.1% on Tuesday). There are officially some 67,000 active cases, but only on paper, while about half of them could/should no longer be actually in this status.

And here's a closer look at the past two weeks, with 3-day, 5-day, 7-day, 10-day, 14-day, and 21-day averages.

As regards the vaccination campaign, it has slowed further. Over 5.2 million people got their first and over 3.7 million of them their second jab.

The chart on the left depicts the same as the one above but only for the past month (2 May - 2 June). The areas show the 14-day averages and the lines the normal percentage of the population vaccinated with the 1st and 2nd doses.

The right-hand chart is a snapshot of the vaccination coverage as of 2 June, i.e. the share of the population that can be considered [partly or fully] protected after their respective first and second jabs.