Economy 23 August 2021, 2:04pm

Key data to watch ahead of (amidst) fourth wave in coronavirus pandemic in Hungary

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Hungarian authorities diagnosed 340 people with coronavirus infection over the three-day weekend, and six people died of diseases related to COVID-19 during these three days, taking the death toll to 30,052, the official government portal reported on Monday morning. The number of new daily confirmed cases continues to rise. The government plans no lockdown measures, not even bringing back mandatory mask-wearing. Nothing to see here. Everything is hunky-dory. Hold my beer, while I check some numbers, though, will you?

Today's figure comprises new cases for four days (there was no report on Friday morning for Thursday either), and testing was even more lacklustre than usual if that is even possible. The 340 new cases between Thursday and Sunday compares with 292 on the same days a week earlier.

Six people died over the long weekend, which also marks a rise compared to the previous days.

There are currently 73 people in hospital with coronavirus infection, 10 of whom require mechanical ventilation.

About the positivity rate

As testing and contact-tracing are basically non-existent (24,000 tests were performed over a four-day period, we should watch the number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals and on ventilators more closely. Not just the absolute figures but also their percentages.

UPDATE: The official government portal has been updated during the day and showed a total of 31,131 samples tested, 6,373 more than previously reported. This does not change the overall picture, though. The positivity rate, however, dropped to 1.09% from 1.37%.

First, here are two charts depicting not only various averages of the positivity rate, but even more important metrics, the 3-day/21-day ratio and its 7-day average.

What these show is that the 3-day average of the positivity rate (as well as the daily positivity rate but it’s not on the chart) hit its lowest level on 4 July; the 7-day average positivity rate bottomed out on 5 July and the 21-day average fell to its lowest on 14 July.

The 3-day/21-day ratio was at its lowest on 3 June, 26 June and 4 July, its 7-day average hit its lowest on 18 June and 5 July.

Briefly about the test positivity rate: when a pandemic wave is on the rise, the shorter the daily averages are (columns), the higher they spike over the longer averages (lines). So, when the virus is spreading more rapidly, the top of these columns will be above the lines, and when a pandemic is in retreat, the columns end below the lines. When they are largely at the same level, there are the the turnarounds in the trend.

The pink line is the 3-day average positivity rate divided by the 21-day positivity rate (right-hand scale). If this rise over 100%, it signals the start of a new wave. When it's under 100%, the pandemic is receding. The jumps indicate dramatic and abrupt changes. (Read more about these here.)

The following charts show the absolute number of those treated in hospital with COVID-19 and who required artificial ventilation. The left-hand chart encompasses a two-month period, the one on the right a three-week period. The one on the left shows the third wave petered out around 5 July and that is when the fourth wave started (i.e. dynamic stagnation).

The right-hand chart shows when the fourth wave started to pick up. It was when stagnation disappears from the hospital data and figures are starting to rise.

The second set of charts shows ratios: COVID-19 cases in hospital / Active cases, and COVID-19 cases on ventilator / Cases in hospital. The left-hand charts shows a roller-coaster, with a flat section (3rd wave subsiding, start of the 4th wave), a moderate rise then an abrupt and sharp ascent, which had to do with the fact that about 20,000 people were reclassified from active status to recovered at once. The right-hand charts shows an uptick and a sharp rise.

And here's another chart showing the 7-day rolling averages of COVID-19 patients in hospitals a percentage of active cases (distorted, see reason above), and those on ventilators as a percentage of those in hospitals, which has been hovering in range between 14% and 16% for a month.

Basically, the epidemiological situation is indeed getting worse, but it appears to be so dramatic because of the administrative ’tricks’. We’ll see the same happening in a couple of weeks when the number of active cases suddenly starts to rise.

As you can see, the ratio of ventilated COVID-19 patients to the number of those in hospital peaked in early July north of 20%. This also underpins the assumption that it was the end of period when the 3rd wave subsided. Those people in the ICUs were admitted in the previous wave and most of them have unfortunately passed away since then. The drop in this particular ratio stems from the fact that these are already new patients in the current wave. The number of people in hospitals will continue to rise, and so this particular ratio will drop further in the coming weeks.

What is the lesson here?

We should have tested more, should have had contact-tracing in place, should not have eliminated each and every lockdown measure, should have kept mask-wearing mandatory at least indoors… Should have, could have, would have… It's water under the bridge. Again. Water carrying over 30,000 bodies...

Let’s look back one year in time. How many infections were then and how many there are now per day? Let’s see just five days, between 18 August and 22 August. Then and now. Shall we? In August 2021: 32, 44, 52, 35, 22. In 2021: 340 over a four-day period, plus 123 a day before.

Okay, what else? As of 22 August, 865 people were in mandatory quarantine. A year earlier: 7,470.

As testing is virtually non-existent, we should focus on hospital data at the moment. The weekly average number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals was a round 60 and going down a year ago, while it is around 80 and going up. The respective figures for those on ventilator are 6 and 11.

“The problem remains small until there are 2,000 to 3,000 COVID-19 patients in hospital. Last autumn, there were 8,000 to 10,000 people with coronavirus infection in hospital with no vaccines in use in any country. 99% had not contracted the infection before, while 60 to 70% of Hungarians had either been infected or got their COVID-19 shots or both,” says Balázs Pártos. He has been keeping a very close eye on the pandemic, publishing simple yet eye-opening charts and figures about it, and has even come up with his own methodology to project changes in the pandemic accurately. This is why up to 3,000 hospitalised coronavirus patients sounds logical, or it can be 4,000 with the more contagious Delta variant (which is currently becoming dominant everywhere). This implies another 5,000 to 10,000 deaths, but most of the deceased will be those that had not been inoculated or those over 60 years of age that received inefficient vaccines and never asked for a third dose.

What data should we watch very closely?

The real problem would start if the 3,000 to 4,000 ‘threshold’ is exceeded or if half of it is exceeded before the end of September. In that case it’s time for everyone to go and have their antibody levels checked, wear mask everywhere (a practice you should have never stopped indoors and in crowds or at least re-started at least a month ago), and get their third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

If there are more than 1,000 to 1,500 people with coronavirus infection in hospitals before end-September or more than 3,000 at the peak, it will mean that those are already in trouble that had been vaccinated (the effect has worn off) or recovered from the infection too long ago.

And will call it not big trouble but calamity when people younger than 20 years of age start to get admitted into hospitals. In that case, the alarm must be sounded not when the gauge hits 1,000 but when it swings into a few hundred, Pártos concludes.