Economy 11 January 2022, 4:00pm

Omicron share 90% in Hungarian samples, says private lab, it is 29% says Chief Medical Officer

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90% of positive COVID-19 samples contain the Omicron variant (B.1.1.529) of coronavirus, private laboratory Neumann Labs, which was the first in Hungary to report the presence of Omicron in COVID-19 samples in December 2021, told news portal Telex on Tuesday. The country's Chief Medical Officer has also disclosed their findings. Cecília Müller said 29% of the positive tests showed infection by Omicron. Now what? In view of the track record and transparency of official figures we are leaning towards 90%. Last week, Neumann Labs said Omicron was the source of 78% of the samples.

Neumann Labs said they perform 1,000 to 2,000 tests per day, 25% of which come back positive. This is the highest positivity rate they have witnessed since the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic. It also said the Omicron variant was responsible for 90% of these infections.

Only a couple of hours before the laboratory shared its intel with the news portal, Hungary's Chief Medical Officer Cecília Müller told a press briefing that Omicron causes 29% of COVID-19 infections in Hungary, and that this mutation of the virus is spreading more and more.

In light of the transparency and reliability of official data, we should not be surprised at this discrepancy, particularly as Hungarian authorities practically do not sequence the genome of the virus to determine which mutations it has.

If one day they come up with the idea of having a motto, it should be something like this: "You don't wanna know!"