According to a letter sent by Chief Medical Officer Cecília Müller to Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony, during the coronavirus epidemic about a quarter of the registered patients in Hungary became infected with the coronavirus while in a hospital, and almost half of the deaths were directly due to the infection, Hungarian news portal index.hu reports.
On July 14th, the national chief medical officer informed Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony on the basis of data processed at the National Public Health Center, that since the onset of the epidemic, COVID-19 infection has been confirmed by PCR tests in 1,062 individuals due to nosocomial (hospital-acquired) infections in healthcare facilities, 260 of whom have died in care.
As of July 14th, there were a total of 4,258 registered infections, which means that essentially every fourth patient who was diagnosed with the coronavirus contracted the disease while hospitalized. The number of patients who died due to the coronavirus was 595 at the time, which means every second person who died due to the virus became infected in a healthcare facility.
According to Müller, since her last report two months ago, the number of people in Budapest diagnosed with coronavirus in a hospital had also increased. According to the Chief Medical Officer, the total number of those infected in one of the hospitals in the capital is 713, out of which 184 patients have died.
As we reported a month ago, statistics still showed that every third person became infected while hospitalized, which also supports the suspicion that the coronavirus was also brought into nursing homes by patients receiving hospital care. According to index.hu, in several known cases, people living in nursing homes were hospitalized with a negative coronavirus test and then caught the infection there.
Coronavirus: Over 900 Infections, 140 Deaths among Elderly Care Home Residents in Hungary
The answer to the Budapest Mayor also revealed that by July 12th, coronavirus patients had been identified in a total of 33 nursing homes, 13 Budapest institutions, and 20 rural institutions. According to national statistics, 921 residents and 137 workers became ill; more than half of them already recovered, but 140 died.
featured photo: Zoltán Balogh/MTI