Hungary’s COVID-19 numbers DOUBLED, mask-wearing to be reintroduced?

The number of new COVID-19 cases has already started to rise sharply in recent weeks. Unfortunately, the number of COVID-19 patients receiving medical attention in hospitals is now showing a significant increase as well. Continue reading below for more information on the subject.

4 663 new COVID-19 cases were recorded last week. In other words, the trend of more than 50 percent per week increase in the number of COVID-19 cases entering the official statistics (1 961 new infections two weeks ago and 3 042 one week ago) is continuing. This is according to a weekly report from the government’s coronavirus site. While the numbers in their records are accurate, something alarming is going on. The website fails to call the reader’s attention to the fact that there is a resurgence of the pandemic. The government still has yet to release how many COVID tests came out positive, says 444. This would certainly prove as useful data for further analysis.

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More Hungarians in hospitals due to COVID-19

The pandemic might be more far-reaching than we have originally thought. Many people are not tested at all, or if they are, they have done tests at home and thus were not registered into the national system. This is shown by the doubling in the number of people hospitalised with COVID-19 in a single week. Over four hundred people now require hospital treatment, compared with 233 patients a week earlier. The rate at which cases increase is a whopping 109 percent.

The number of patients on breathing machines with coronavirus increased from 5 to 10 in only a week. The number of deaths, however, does not yet show any sign of increase. A week ago 21, this week only 14 reported cases of death surfaced.

Pandemic sweeps Europe yet again

COVID-19 is regaining its strength. This is not only true for Hungary but all across Europe as well. The big question is whether the health system will be under another serious strain. What is known is that the new infections are caused by variants of omicron BA.5 and BA.4. These variants of the virus are significantly better at adapting, being able to avoid immunity by reinfection of older virus variants, writes Qubit. But the new variants cannot significantly evade the durable protection against severe disease conferred by adaptive immune T cells in response to vaccination or infection.

Where there is serious testing, there seems to be a high number of new infections and an increase in the number of people in hospitals. This is not happening at the same rate as the infected. Here in Hungary, the increase in the proportion of people in hospitals and on breathing machines may be higher because the number of people who have contracted the virus may be significantly underestimated.