Coronavirus: Hungarian data arrived on Wednesday, again many victims

The number of cases per day is much higher than yesterday (2,219), but it is still far behind the more than 6,000 of the previous days. Unfortunately, due to the very poor state of epidemiological statistics, we can only grope in the dark about to what extent the decline in the number of cases is a consequence of a mitigating epidemic and to what extent the more modest evidence is a consequence.

The number of severe cases has a very slight upward trend, according to today’s data, the number of hospital admissions has decreased slightly (to less than 8,000), while the number of people with a ventilator has increased. The trend based on severe cases suggests that the epidemic is no longer accelerating to the extent previously seen, but no signs of slowing down can be detected.

After two more encouraging days, the number of deaths was back close to the average for recent weeks. The 160 casualties mean that the death toll has not been able to permanently drop from the 150-200 range that has been typical since late November. The evolution of the number of severe cases suggests that we cannot even expect this for some time.

As we have written about it on several occasions, it is very difficult to map the national trend of the epidemic from Hungarian data. To name only the most important ones:

1. Case numbers move quickly based on wildly varying test numbers, which is even worse in the absence of reliable daily test data.
2. The credibility of the number of people treated at the hospital severely deteriorated when the prime minister said they could care for around 2,000 coronaviruses more than the official figure, just to be examined for the time being.
3. The number of deaths is the most lagging indicator in terms of the development of the epidemic, and it is difficult to find an explanation for why the excess mortality measured in the same period in previous years is much higher than the number of deaths from coronavirus.

All of these uncertainties are also reflected in today’s data. The test number went from 9,500 to 28,700 yesterday, while the positivity rate dropped from 23% to 11%. However, we do not know how many tests have actually been performed in the last 24 hours, as data from the national rapid test program is provided in bulk once a week. In any case, we tried to do an adjusted positivity rate, which has been on a slight downward trend since mid-November (the data from the last two days is not worth pointing out, as epidemiological statistics will report next week perhaps how many rapid tests were done this week).

Based on the above, we can come to the cautious conclusion that the epidemic may have started to slow down in Hungary, although it is not clear why the effect of the closures a month ago is not yet visible in the decrease in the number of cases. serious. So our other cautious conclusion is that the tightening has not worked in the sense that it has not led to a rapid reduction in the epidemic. This is important because based on this, the chances of dissolution are also less. In the next period, the shopping bustle before Christmas will increase, the quieter period between the two holidays will reduce personal interactions, and this could bring more waves in the epidemic curve (almost impossible to edit).

Regarding the regional pattern of the epidemic: according to the data proportional to the population, Vas and Békés County can still be considered sources of infection outside of Nógrád County, the epidemic appears to have spread from the last two areas to neighboring counties. The capital is one of the least infected areas of the country despite its high population density. The findings are also worth discussing here: After the weekend data anomaly, there is strong suspicion that the regional data is simply “manually” adjusting to the large number of national cases. So its reliability is like all our epidemiological statistics.