There are more new infections in Hungary than ever before. Mortality, however, is more worrying
Monday was the first day in the fourth wave of the coronavirus epidemic when the seven-day average of new infections also exceeded the numbers reported at the peak of the third wave, effectively closing it off since the epidemic began.
There have already been days when the number of new infections per day has been higher than ever before: 11,289 new cases were registered last Friday, which is minimally higher than the previous peak of 11,265 infections reported on March 26th. However, the seven-day moving average (the average of the current day and the previous six days) smooths out the fluctuations in daily numbers and therefore shows trends more accurately. In this, on Monday, we left for the first time the third wave and at the same time the peak of the whole epidemic so far:
More infected, fewer severe cases
The number of people infected is still an important indicator, as it shows the development of the epidemic and the rate of spread of the virus. However, vaccines have been widely available since the beginning of the year, and although they provide some protection against infection and re-infection, their main function is to prevent serious illness and death, so even those infected should be monitored for changes in hospitalization. and the number of deaths.
In general, it really looks like a from international datathat where the vaccination campaign was successful and vaccination rates are high, the proportion of hospital and deaths is lower than in the third wave, and where vaccination rates are very low, there are more serious and fatal cases than ever before:
From the example of Israel, the case is also remarkable because their vaccination campaign started as quickly in the spring as in Hungary, so for the fourth wave they also have a decrease in protection against the above infection. It can also be seen that, for example, compared to Portugal, which later boosted its vaccination program, the number of people infected rose above spring levels, while other indicators remained much lower. (The other issue is that in Israel, the third vaccinations were also administered with great efficiency, which quickly broke the fourth wave.)
As can be seen from the graph above, which shows the Hungarian infection data, the fourth wave brings the most infections in Hungary. However, the number of hospital admissions from this multi-infection is lower than before, not only in the harsh third wave, but also in the second wave a year earlier – which is good news – although it’s remarkable that the number of people on the ventilator is exactly the same as last fall:
Fewer deaths, yet more than anywhere else
We have no reason to be happy either, because there is a significant increase in mortality data. Fortunately, the number of deaths is still below the previous two waves. However, if let’s see In the surrounding countries, where the number of new infections has started to rise at a similar rate, we see that the lowest number of infected people in Hungary, or perhaps the number of deaths, is higher only in Croatia than in Hungary, and we have caught up with them by now:
THE number of hospital admissions also with us from these countries. And we are not doing very well in mortality, not only at regional level, but also at EU level, a seven-day moving average In terms of population, the situation is the fifth worst in Hungary:
For this fifth place, it is worth noting that in Hungary, since the summer, the three previous days have not been announced on a weekend, only on Monday. This bias would be smoothed out by the seven-day moving average, but since it is on Monday and our World in Data data is one day behind, the above average includes zero days due to weekend data release, so the weekend summary reported on Monday is not yet available. This means that in reality Hungary is even higher on the above list: calculated on the daily average of the weekend’s aggregate data, the correct number per million people is not 13.54, but 14.2, so we are in fourth place ahead of Romania.