Economy 16 January 2025, 4:18pm

Record number of Hungarians in hospital with severe acute respiratory infections

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While the holiday season put a (deceptive) dent in the number of registered respiratory infections in Hungary, the hospitalisation statistics clearly show a worsening epidemic, with 35% of people treated with severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) infected by some influenza virus and a quarter of SARI patients and over 90% of RSV patients under 2 years of age.

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Key findings:

more than one third of the samples tested on the 1st week of 2025 showed infection with some kind of influenza virus;
the coronavirus positivity rate was 6.3% (after 0% on the 1st week), but the share of SARS-CoV-2 in all samples tested remains high at 13.7% versus 8.7% for influenza;
the number of people hospitalised with severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) was the highest yet in the current respiratory season;
less than 9% of those hospitalised tested positive for COVID-19, while there were already 83 people with influenza infection in hospital, i.e. almost 35% of all SARI patients;
of the 238 people in hospital with SARI, 58 (24.4%) were aged two or younger, down from almost 40% on the first week, while 97 (40.8%) were 60 and above.

(Our previous report up to the 1st week of 2025 has also been released today.)

Lower numbers only reflect the holiday season

On the 2nd week of 2025 (6-12 January), 222,900 people sought medical help with acute respiratory infections (ARI), including 43,300 people with flu-like symptoms, according to data released by the National Centre for Public Health and Pharmacy (NNGYK) on Thursday.

Note that both the 43rd and 44th weeks had only four working days due to national holidays, hence the fewer number of cases in the statistics and the dips in the graphs. The dataset for the 52nd week is full of holes, as the NNK published an abridged report with only some testing figures.) The respiratory season (often and erroneously referred to as 'flu season') generally peaks between the 4th and the 9th week of the year.

A short-term comparison (for the last three seasons of respiratory illnesses) shows that the number of patients with ARI, including those with flu-like symptoms was much higher than at this point in the previous two respiratory seasons.

The share of flu-like symptoms in ARI was up at 19.4% from 14.5% on the 1st week, exceeding the comparative readings from the past two seasons.

We also have data for ARIs and flu-like symptoms per 100,000 population, although a long-term data series is available only for the latter.

in terms both ari and flu-like symptoms per 100,000 people, the situation is currently way worse than in either of the previous two respiratory seasons.

In the graph below you can compare to the flu situation with the previous 13 respiratory seasons, and find that the situation has never been worse.

A total of 382 samples were tested on the 2nd week (a record for the current respiratory season), with 24 coming back COVID-19 positive (up from 0 on the 1st week). The 6.3% positivity rate compares with 13.6% (30 cases) a year ago and 6.5% (9 cases) two years ago.

The share of influenza (35.3%) in the tested samples is well above the previous two years' respective prints (around 14%), while that of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) remains lower (2.6%) than in 2023/24 (4.5%) and 2022/23 (11.7%).

The following graph may seem a bit fuzzy but at least it shows for a side-by side comparison the weekly positivity rates for influenza (green), Covid (orange), and RSV (blue) for the past three respiratory seasons up to the 2nd week.

As regards the individual positivity rates in all the samples, the 'switch' never took place in the 2023/24 respiratory season (i.e. the total number of positive Covid tests in all samples tested remained higher than the number of positive flu tests) in and occurred by the end of the 3rd week in the 2022/23 season.

As the chart below attests, SARS-CoV-2 continues to be the main pathogen in samples, with 477 positive tests (13.7% of the 3,486 samples tested), followed by influenza (304), rhinovirus (44), RSV (24), parainfluenza (5), human metapneumovirus (HMPV, 8), and adenovirus (4).

238 people with severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) were hospitalised on the 2nd week of 2025, of whom 21 (or 8.8%) required intensive care. The former figure is the highest so far in the current respiratory season, while the ICU/hospitalised ratio came down from the second highest figure of 11.8% on the 1st week. The respective figures for the 2nd week of 2024 were 166 people in hospital, and 19 (11.4%) in ICUs.

Further breakdown shows that 21 people (8.8% of SARI patients) were hospitalised with SARS-CoV-2 infection, up from 20 a week earlier and about a fifth of the 2024 print (78 people or 47% of all SARI patients).

A total of 83 people in hospital with SARI tested positive for influenza, which corresponds to 34.9% of all SARI patients.

This compares with only 19 influenza patients (11.4% of all SARI patients) in hospital on the 2nd week of 2024.

The share of RSV patients edged up to 9.7% (23), which compares with 7.8% (13) a year earlier and 27.9% (61) two years earlier.

Of the 238 people in hospital with SARI, 58 (24.4%) were aged two or younger, which is an improvement over 86 (39.1%) a week earlier, while 97 (40.8%) were 60 and above, worse than on the 1st week (69 or 31.4%).

Also, 14 (66.7%) of the 21 COVID-19 patients were over 60 years of age, up from 12 (60%) on the 1st week.

A year ago, of the 166 people in hospital with SARI, 40 (24.1%) were aged two or younger, while 91 (55%) were 60 or older. Also, 62 (79.5%) of the 78 COVID-19 patients were over 60 years of age.

The age breakdown of people seeking medical help with ARI and flu-like symptoms are shown below.

The majority of ARI patients belonged in the 0-14 age group throughout the 'flu season' last year, while the share of people going to the doctor with flu-like symptoms was the highest in the 15-34 age group up to the 2nd week of this year when the youngest were in majority until the 40th week bar a couple of weeks towards the end. You fund a heat map in one of our previous articles here.

The number and share of children up to 14 years of age remains higher among people with flu-like symptoms than the number and share of those in the 15-34 age group, after two weeks when they switched places on the first week of 2025.

Pertussis not gone either

The number of suspected whooping cough cases closed at an absolute record of 1,354 cases in 2024, and we had a w/w doubling of suspected cases to 8 on the 1st week of 2025. Half of those infected were infants.