Economy 31 August 2021, 1:23pm

COVID-19: Positivity rate keeps on rising

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Hungarian authorites diagnosed 110 people with COVID-19 and one person died of coronavirus-related complications over the past 24 hours, the official government portal reported on Tuesday. The positivity rate continues to rise which does not bode well for the future.

koronavírus járvány mintavétel teszt covid-19 magyar adat

We need to highlight that the focus needs to be on the number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals and on ventilators, rather than on how many new cases are found and how much the number of infections has grown over the past five or seven days. It is almost irrelevant.

This is how August 2021 compares with August 2020 (only new daily cases and their total).

The number of COVID-19 patients in hospital jumped by 21 to 119, of whom 13 require mechanical ventilation, up from 7 reported on Monday morning. The ratio of those on ventilators to those in hospitals went up to 10.9%.

The chart below shows the 7-day rolling averages of COVID-19 patients in hospitals as a percentage of active cases (distorted, given that the records of active cases does not keep track of the actual number of people with COVID-19, and there has recently been a drastic reclassification from active status to recovered), and those on ventilators as a percentage of those in hospitals, which has been hovering in range between 14% and 16% for a month, but now the index is down at 9.8%.

The following charts show how the changes of the key hospitalisation figures (l-h) and how the changes have been changing (r-h).

The four charts below show the absolute number of COVID-19 patients in hospitals and on ventilators (top two) as well as two ratios (COVID-19 cases in hospital / Active cases, and COVID-19 cases on ventilator / Cases in hospital, bottom two.) The left-hand charts depict a longer period of two months, while the right-hand ones show changes over the past three weeks.

Hungary's absolutely dreadful testing practices also deserve a word or two. This time, a single chart will suffice. (Analysis of the data by Balázs Pártos.)

The left-hand scale (0 to 3%) shows positivity rates, while the right-hand scale goes up to 150% to show the 3-day / 21-day ratios and their 7-day averages to avoid distortions.

The curves show the 3-day and 21-day average positivity rates (lower ones), as well as the 3-d avg / 21-d avg ratio (thick grey) and its 7-d average (thick purple).

As regards the l-h scale: the range under 0.5% is where the World Health Organisation (WHO) says the positivity rate should be. Well, this range is not exactly packed here. Maybe a week's worth of data in the 3-day average in late June, early July. (End of school, partying and vacations have not kicked in yet.)

Between 0.5 and 1.0% the pandemic is kept in check. This was the case up to early August. That was when testing should have been revved up to push the ratio back to under 0.5%.

Between 1.0 and 2.0% we have an accelerating escalatio, the last chance to do something about the spread of the virus, e.g. not attending mass events, wearing face masks, perform tonnes of tests, step up contract tracing, tighten quarantine regulations. It took Hungary merely two weeks to jump from 1.0% to 2.0%.

North of the 2.0% mark... we only have data for a couple of days, and the 3-day average is up at 1.94%. Doubling to about 5.0% would take as long as going up to 2.0% from 1.0%. At this point it not appear to be a farfetched projection to expect the positivity rate up around 5.0% within three weeks. (Note that there will be more and more people that will spread the virus while being asymptomatic.)

As for the right-hand scale, under 100% = good, above 100% = bad. Ascending curves = good.

When did test positiviy hit its lowest?

3-day average: 4 July
21-day average: 13 July
3-d/21-d: 5 July
7-d avg of 3-d/21-d hits 100%: 15 July.

The latter was rising until 23 July and then was dropping for about three weeks and then started to rise again. The decrease could have been caused by people spendig time in the sun, and an extremely low number of tests performed.

The 3-day/21-day ratio has exceeded 150% (although it has turned back) and test positivity is close to 2.0%

The number of COVID-19 vaccines administered (1st doses) exceeded 14,400, the highest daily reading since June. This may have to do with a campaign to inoculate school children before the start of the school year. It remains a mystery why it was organised for the last few days of August, while it is common knowledge that the first dose does not give you full protection, as it develops 10-14 days after the second dose. This may give children and their parents who are unaware of this fact a false sense of protection from coronavirus infection and potentially lead to an accelerated spread of the virus.