Economy 9 November 2022, 1:45pm

COVID-19: Late data shows no signs of flare-up in Hungary

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All key official coronavirus statistics but the number of weekly deaths improved in over the seven days up to 8 November in Hungary. The country's COVID-19 data website koronavirus.gov.hu has published the latest weekly readings after a one-week hiatus caused by a national holiday.

Wednesday is the Covid data reporting day in Hungary, but koronavirus.gov.hu said a week ago that there would be a delay due to a long weekend (All Saints' Day), promising the figures for the second half of the week. It did not deliver, though, and waited until now to publish Covid stats but only for last week.

In some cases (number of deaths and new cases) we can simply calculate data for the seven days up to 1 November, while in the rest of the cases (number of Covid patients in hospital, on ventilator and Covid shots administered) we had to use a different approach for these figures refer to a 14-day period instead of a 7-day period. Hence for the seven days up to 1 November (used for the charts) we used our own estimates as follows: the difference between the current figures and those from a fortnight ago was divided by two and added to the 25 Oct figures.

Highlights for the last few weeks (the rest is on the charts):

New cases: 4,556, -39% from 7,459 a week ago
New deaths: 91, +14% from 81 a week ago
In hospital: 985, -16% from 1,178 a week ago
On ventilator: 18, -16% from 22 a week ago.

The daily average of coronavirus-related deaths dropped to 12 for the last 14 days from 20 in the preceding seven days.

Here are a few charts about the key indicators that show the main developments in the pandemic since mid-May:

The 'On ventilator / In hospital' ratio was falling constantly since May, although there was a spike in late August. The ratio has been steadily rising since mid-Sept and reached 1.9% in mid-October, only to rather inexplicably drop to 1.1% after and then jump back to 1.8%.

Vaccination uptake rises, 4th doses remain the most popular

A total of 11,926 COVID-19 shots have been administered in Hungary over the past 14 days, and if we divide that by two, 5,963 jabs compare with 8,738 reported two weeks ago, a 32% decline.

The daily average dropped sharply to 852 doses per day from 1,248, but that was a fluke (+47% w/w). (Given the even distribution of the number of shots administered between 25 October and 8 November - as the official figures reflect 14-day changes - the change between 1 Nov and 8 Nov does not reflect the actual change, but this is the best we could do.)