Economy 3 September 2021, 4:07pm

COVID-19: More people in hospital and on ventilator in Hungary

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Hungarian authorities diagnosed 247 people with COVID-19 and one person died of coronavirus-related complications over the past 24 hours, the official government portal reported on Friday. The rolling 3-day average positivity rate rose to 2.23%.

The new daily reading marks a drop from yesterday’s 262, but the trend remains ascending.

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.

There are still fewer cases than in the same period last year, but there are several factors to consider here.

Chance. we are comparing initial and brief periods in two waves. If you look at the chart below, you’ll see why we should not read too much into the current pandemic situation, no matter how favourable it would seem compared to a year ago.
Smaller initial momentum. Last year, the key driver of the pandemic was tourists returning from abroad infected. It may be different this time, mainly because of vaccinations and also because of travel restrictions for those unvaccinated. This is a temporary relief, though.
The dynamics of the pandemic. There are more protected people either COVID-19 shots or via infection. This may sound well, but if we take a look at Israel where the vaccination rate is higher than in Hungary, yet they are struggling with a record number of infections, we are not so sure anymore.
Massive underdetection. This seems to be the most likely driver. There must be a lot more infections only as their symptoms are not severe, they do not get tested and so they’re not on the radar (or in this case the statistics) of Hungarian authorities.

There were 149 people with coronavirus infection in hospital as of Thursday night, with 19 of them on ventilator. The ratio of those on ventilators to those in hospitals went up to 12.8% from 8.8% a week ago.

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 were 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, then it started to drop in late August, but now the index is up at 10.2%.

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.

As for testing, the 3-day/21-day ratio is at 149% (although it has turned back), and the 7-day average of the 3d/21d ratio is also nearly 150%. Test positivity has eased to 2.27%, while the rolling 3-day average went up to 2.23%.