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Less than two weeks after ordering the evacuation of 36,000 hospital beds, the government already had a peak in early May. Now it seems: in fact, it was the majority, but only two thousand infected by active coronaviruses. Was the revised epidemiological forecast so accurate, if Orbán had a lottery or did the statistics match his words?
Experts say the epidemic in Hungary will peak on May 3, he said as an almost dismissed comment. Viktor Orbán just two weeks before the indicated date, April 19, to the director of the Ajka Hospital. In a one-minute video uploaded to Facebook, the prime minister did not explain the prediction, nor later, that is, he did not reveal exactly what he meant by a climax. He added, however, that by then there will be five thousand fans in the country, “that’s pretty sure,” and their number will later reach eight thousand. (It is also unclear, of course, why it is necessary to acquire so many fans almost once more after the peak, the Prime Minister has shed light on this: “it would be enough for war”).
Orbán’s communication was strange and seemed risky for several reasons:
- members of the government had previously spoken of a summer peak (June-July),
- Although there are mathematical models to predict the evolution of the epidemic curve, political leaders rarely commit to saying exactly when the peak is expected during the day, if only because of responsibility,
- His written graduation began on May 4, so the opposition had reason to say that the prime minister would send eighty thousand high school graduates to take the exam in the greatest danger.
The next day Müller Cecília Confirmed by the Medical Director, the Prime Minister’s estimate is correct, and operational staff are preparing for a peak on May 3, although what the peak will be, has not yet been revealed, the number of new cases, deaths or active infections. neither what height
Less than two weeks earlier, on April 7, the government ordered 60 percent (36,000) of hospital beds to be emptied by April 15 to care for coronavirus patients if necessary. How Lantos Gabriella 36,000 beds would not be needed even in the event of a recurrence of the epidemic in Italy, however the Cabinet insisted on keeping the beds empty until the end of last week, then decided Infected patients needing treatment are transferred to a hospital and the National Institute of Pneumology Korányi. Therefore, the previous measure of sending patients home has lost its meaning.
Internal epidemiological prognoses are likely to have changed rapidly and dramatically in the days following bed evacuation. In fact, in mid-April, a variety of mathematical models were born, Tamás Nepusz On April 13, for example, a bioinformatics researcher told RTL Híradó that he estimated that 814,000 people could become infected in Hungary in mid-July. There really would have been a demand for 36,000 hospital beds in the case of a massive illness at most. Could refer to this or similar models Miklós Kásler Also the Minister of Human Resources, when he explained to the Hungarian nation on Monday the release of the beds: “the course of the epidemic could not be accurately estimated at first, there were several calculations with the most surprising numbers.” There was also a mathematical model according to which hundreds of thousands will become infected in Hungary. The position of the government and operating personnel was that health care should be prepared for the worst case. “
However, on April 19, the Prime Minister certainly did not start from these predictions, since at the same time, in mid-April, most people had to be infected by a spike in early May. In comparison, the number of new cases at the time was only between 60 and 120 per day. And following the announcement of the May 3 spike, despite Cecília Müller’s one-month repetitive warning, the government said we would not enter a period of mass illness. This also explains the fact that curfew restrictions have been lifted in the field since May 4.
And it really seems that, at least in the first wave of the epidemic, there really won’t be massive illnesses at home. The figure below shows the number of new and active coronavirus cases and deaths per day from March 14 to date.
Of the yellow columns, May 3 is the highest, so according to official statistics
It was the day predicted by the Prime Minister that there were the majority (2054) of active registered patients, that is, that day there were the most infectious people in the country. Their number has been reduced by more than one hundred and fifty.
This can also be called a spike (although relatively few new patients were identified that day, 37), all the more so because the number of new cases fluctuates, the graph shows only one outstanding value: on April 9, 210 were found. new infections, mainly in Pest. in a mobile nursing home after the institution’s residents were massively screened at the time. And in terms of the number of deaths, we cannot speak of a peak either, the majority (17) died on April 18 due to the coronavirus, but the number of deaths has been on a very narrow scale for more than a month.
A good week has passed since May 3, of course, it is not possible to say definitively about the development of the epidemic in Hungary. Since then, massive and representative tests have begun, the partial results of which will be reported today at a press conference by medical universities. But for now, it appears that the number of active infections has increased only once in the past seven days (meaning more new cases have been reported than the number of people who recovered or died), even just a few. In other words, increasing the number of daily samples to 4-5 thousand does not result in more positive tests.
Something strange can be found in the previous figure: according to the data published at dawn on May 4, the previous day only one patient officially recovered from the coronavirus, while the next day it was 79, so the number of active cases decreased suddenly at 62 compared to the previous day’s peak. . But while there may be a minor beautification in the data release, it really seems like many people recovered from the disease in the early days of May, while the number of new cases per day doesn’t exceed fifty per week. Of course, this may change with the removal of access restrictions, but in a weeklong perspective there are no signs of this, the virus spreads only in closed communities (social institutions, hospitals).
We asked Havasi Bertalant, the Prime Minister’s press chief: what expert forecasts were available to Viktor Orbán, who had previously spoken about the uncertainty of the estimates, who predicted the development of the epidemic with such precision in mid-April, and who made them? ? We asked if the public could find out about them and how they are calculated based on these estimates: when can we get there, that there will be no new infections, and when can we completely eradicate the presence of the virus in Hungary? We haven’t received a response yet, but if it does come, we’ll report it.
Featured Image: János Marjai /24.hu
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