Economy 23 January 2025, 1:48pm

Almost half of SARI patients in Hungarian hospitals have influenza

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The respiratory season in Hungary is getting serious, not that it has been a breeze before. The number of people per 100,000 inhabitants seeking medical help with influenza-like symptoms was higher than on the 3rd week of 2025 only once in 2017. The number of Hungarians in hospital with severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) is also at a new seasonal high, and almost half of the patients are infected by some influenza virus and a quarter of SARI patients and some 80% of RSV patients under 2 years of age.

Key findings:

about 42% of the samples tested on the 3rd week of 2025 showed infection with some kind of influenza virus;
the coronavirus positivity rate was down at 2.8% from 6.3%, and
the influenza positivity rate for all samples tested (12.3%) is extremely close to the cumulated Covid positivity rate (12.5%), while the gap was still 5 percentage points a week earlier;
the RSV positivity rate edged up to 3.0% from 2.6%;
the number of human metapneumovirus (HMPV) infections reached 15 or 0.4% of all samples tested, which matches the numbers a year earlier;
the number of people hospitalised with severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) was the highest yet in the current respiratory season;
only 7.2% of those hospitalised tested positive for COVID-19, while there were already 113 people with influenza infection in hospital, i.e. almost more than 45% of all SARI patients;
of the 250 people in hospital with SARI, 64 (25.6%) were aged two years or younger, slightly up from the 2nd week but down from 40% on the first week, while 93 (37.2%) were aged 60 years and older.

Technical relief in holiday season followed by surge

On the 3rd week of 2025 (13-19 January), 246,900 people sought medical help with acute respiratory infections (ARI), including 53,800 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 21.8% from 19.4% on the 2nd week, exceeding the comparative readings from the past two seasons (14.5% and 12.8%, respectively).

We also have data for ARIs and flu-like symptoms per 100,000 inhabitants, 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 been worse than currently (yellow line) only once in 2016/17.

Positivity rates

A total of 427 samples were tested on the 3rd week (yet another record for the current respiratory season), with 12 coming back COVID-19 positive (down from 12 on the 2nd week). The 2.8% positivity rate compares with 16.8% (52 cases) a year ago and 9.7% (13 cases) two years ago.

The share of influenza (41.9%) in the tested samples is well above the previous two years' respective prints (20.1% and 22.4%, respectively), while that of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) remains lower (3.0%) than in 2023/24 (3.9%) and 2022/23 (9.7%).

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 3rd week. It is evident how the flu positivity rate stands out this year, whether we compare it to the corresponding rates in the previous two years or to the Covid and RSV positivity rates.

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 but barely, with 489 positive tests (12.5% of the 3,913 samples tested), followed closely by influenza (383), rhinovirus (46), RSV (37), parainfluenza (5), human metapneumovirus (HMPV, 15), and adenovirus (4).

Hospitalisations

250 people with severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) were hospitalised on the 3rd week of 2025, of whom 29 (or 11.6%) required intensive care. The former figure is the highest so far in the current respiratory season, while the ICU/hospitalised ratio also picked up from 8.8% on the 2nd seek. The respective figures for the 3rd week of 2024 were 201 people in hospital, and 25 (12.4%) in ICUs.

Further breakdown shows that 18 people (7.2% of SARI patients) were hospitalised with SARS-CoV-2 infection, down from 21 a week earlier and about a fifth of the 2024 print (101 people or 50.2% of all SARI patients), and also well below the 2023 numbers (38 or 18%).

A total of 113 people in hospital with SARI tested positive for influenza, which corresponds to 45.1% of all SARI patients.

This compares with only 23 influenza patients (11.4% of all SARI patients) in hospital on the 3rd week of 2024 and 10 (4.7%) on the same week of 2023.

The share of RSV patients dropped to 5.6% (14) from 9.7% (23), which compares with 2.5%% (5) a year earlier and 18.5% (39) two years earlier.

Age distribution of patients

Of the 250 people in hospital with SARI, 64 (25.6%) were aged two years or younger, which shows a rise from 58 (24.4%) a week earlier, while 93 (37.2%) were aged 60 years and older, fewer than on the 2nd week (97 or 40.8%).

Also, 11 (61.1%) of the 18 COVID-19 patients were over 60 years of age, down from 14 (66.7%) on the 2nd week.

A year ago, of the 201 people in hospital with SARI, 29 (14.4%) were aged two or younger, while 126 (62.7%) were 60 or older. Also, 62 (77.2%) of the 101 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 (and so far this year too), 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 last year when the youngest were in majority for nine weeks and then it was back and forth between the 13th and 20th week. You fund a heat map for the previous season in one of our previous articles here.

The number and share of children up to 14 years of age was again 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 weeks of 2025.

Pertussis cases also pick up

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 17 from 8 on the 2nd week of 2025, with 44% of those infected were infants. Also, 56% of the infections were detected in the 0-14 age group and 60% in the 0-19 age group.