Coronavirus: Staggering number of Hungarians await test, suspicious cases ordered

The ambulance service can no longer test suspected coronavirus cases for 3 days, so they have started equipping people for each coronavirus center, Portfolio learned. Patients awaiting examination who show mild symptoms are asked not to use public transportation and to come in for the test wearing a mask.

A reader from our capital indicated that the ambulance service called me today to go to the test station at a certain time. Their GP previously said they would go to the ambulance within 1-3 days. Our reader waiting to be evaluated produces mild symptoms. We also received information about another case in Budapest, from whom the sample was taken at the indicated location.

All this indicates that the epidemic has become so widespread in some places that the testing system introduced (ambulance service arrives at the residence) can no longer bear the burden, so a major change is needed.

As we write: Hungary has reached its capacity limit in the current testing system, so ambulances no longer arrive within 24 hours. Last week, ambulances promised to arrive between 24 and 48 hours, but the waiting list has been increased to 3 days in recent days.

Therefore, the daily case numbers in recent days no longer reflect the spread of the epidemic, but rather show the limitation of testing capabilities (how many tests can be performed in ambulances and evaluated in laboratories). That is, presumably the number of new confirmed cases per day did not exceed 1000 because we couldn’t test as many: if we analyzed as many as we should (as many suspected cases), we could see substantially higher daily cases.

A change in testing strategy indicates that the epidemiologist would seek further testing in the next period (inviting suspected cases to testing) to arrive at a diagnosis earlier.

We also send our questions to the operations staff as soon as they are answered, we will update our article.

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