Economy 2 July 2021, 1:11pm

Only most serious COVID-19 cases remain in hospital in Hungary

Portfolio

Hungarian authorities reported no COVID-19 deaths for the second consecutive day, while the number of new cases continues to drop, and the vaccination campaign fizzled out. There are some good news and some bad news.

Over the past 24 hours, only 32 people were diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 and no one died of coronavirus related diseases.

The number of coronavirus patients in hospital has continued to drop (both the daily figures and the 3-day averages) although the rate of the decrease continues to flatten. The number of those requiring mechanical ventilation is already stagnating (both the daily figures and the 3-day averages) but at a low level.

Hardly any of the active cases are in hospital, but the share of those on ventilator to the number of those treated in hospital has been rising. This means that only very serious cases remain in hospital.

The decline in the number of active cases slowed down substantially to well under 1% d/d from 5% (7-day average), while the number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals has been dropping by 9 to 10% (7-day average) versus 5% previously. The number of coronavirus patients on ventilator has been dropping by 5 to 6% (7-d avg).

The right-hand chart shows that up to the end of June, the decline in the ratio of COVID-19 cases in hospital to the number of active cases was 1.5-2.0 times as high as the drop in active cases, but this ratio (the fraction of the orange and green lines) is now up around 10-12. The ratio of those on ventilators to those in hospital (the blue line divided by the orange line) remains under 100% which shows that a higher ratio of those in hospital end up on the ventilator.

On the whole, test positivity looks fine, but authorities have a hard time reporting active cases as recovered. These people are either those with positive tests recovering at home rather than in hospital, or GPs, hospitals have just simply forgotten to report them as recovered.

There is practically no more room for improvement unless more active cases are placed in recovered status.

The key question is how long this situation will remain. When the UK coronavirus variant (B.1.1.7) was first discovered in the United Kingdom, it took Hungary about two months to produce the same patterns.

If the same should happen with the Delta variant (B.1.617.2), five to six weeks of those two months have already passed, which means it should make a clearly visible entrance by mid-July, theoretically that is. Then we’ll have to see how many people gained immunity via infection and how effective China’s Sinopharm vaccine is against Delta. As regards western vaccines we have at least some idea how they work against the new variants from the examples of the UK and Israel.

As voluntary testing at electronics manufacturer Videoton showed, one in three people above 60 vaccinated with the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine have neither antibodies or T-cells and are not protected against the coronavirus, Ottó Sinkó, co-CEO of Videoton, told Portfolio. Virologist Miklós Rusvai told TV channel RTL Klub that the fact that some of those vaccinated with Sinopharm are not protected “could strongly contribute to a fourth wave of the pandemic and could determine how high the next wave will be.” Meanwhile, antibody test results obtained by online news portal Telex also show that some vaccinated people have no antibodies.

In the meantime, Hungary is to further ease pandemic-related restrictions. Most likely as of Saturday, mask wearing will no longer be compulsory even indoors.

The vaccination campaing in the country of 9.8 million people has practically fizzed out at 5.5 million people expected to be vaccinated with at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the day.