Recently, the number of active coronavirus cases in Hungary has increased significantly. We don’t yet know the exact reason for this, however, in an article, news site Magyar Hang writes that the explanation might be simple: authorities in Hungary have conducted more tests in past days than ever before.
Many people in Hungary think that authorities are not that keen when it comes to testing. Compared to neighboring countries, the number of tests has been rather low since the novel coronavirus appeared in the country.
As hang.hu cites the story from one of their readers who had come from a country that was labeled in the safe ’green’ category, couldn’t convince authorities to test them even though they were already witnessing symptoms similar to the coronavirus.
But if we look at the figures of past days we can see that on Wednesday the number of daily new registered cases increased by 73, with 4,625 tests conducted. On Tuesday, authorities had only performed 1,892 tests.
Some came to the conclusion that the “record-breaking number” of tests might be related to the fact that many high-ranking government politicians had to go to quarantine recently since they had come in contact with Fidesz communication director István Hollik, who tested positive for the virus.
Independent MP Ákos Hadházy in a social media post wrote: “…strangely, one day we suddenly conduct more tests, then more people turn out to be infected. I just didn’t know why we tested so much on Wednesday. Well here’s the reason: when the almighty government is in trouble, [chief medical officer] M. Cecília is willing to test even the last deputy state secretary .”
In the article Magyar Hang, however, also outlines that despite the growing number of cases we can find some reasurring figures among the coronavirus related statistics. Although the number of tests have been steadily increasing, fortunately only a fraction of them have come back positive. As the portal highlights, the number of those treated in the hospital and those on ventilators are extremely low and doesn’t seem to be increasing significantly. This means that the vast majority of newly infected people are in home quarantine and are either asymptomatic or have milder symptoms. There is no surge in the mortality rate either.
Featured photo by Tibor Rosta/MTI
