Covid's 4th wave is over, but Omicron is coming through the gates

HUNGARY - In Brief 06 Jan 2022 by Istvan Racz

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There is good news and bad news once again. The former is that daily new cases, hospitalisations, patients in serious condition, virus test hit ratios have all fallen back substantially from the heights of the local 4th wave, seen in November. The latter is that there is no peace on the Covid front at all: the daily new cases chart, presented below (7-day averages compared to the same days of 2020 and very early 2021, official data), shows the now usual post-holiday pick-up, which is flavoured this time by the appearance of Omicron.As regards the presence of the latter, evidence is somewhat contradictory. If you ask the government, Omicron represents 11% of new cases, but if you listen to Neumann Labs, a private service provider, it has been 78% of their tested sample most lately. Anyway, Omicron has filtered through the (not very tightly closed) gates. As we know it, it is only a matter of a little time that it will most certainly become predominant locally, if it is not already.Our second chart shows the number of patients in hospital with Covid on a daily basis. (Somehow, new admissions are not reported by the authorities, though it would be tremendously useful for basic analysis.) Currently, the number is 45% lower than on the same day of the previous year, which appears to be an achievement due to vaccination (62% of the whole population with two shots, 33% with two shots plus a booster one). Daily Covid deaths are also lower by 25% than a year ago, probably for the same reason.Mainly, the number of hospitalised Covid patients is only 25% of the historic peak seen on March 30, 2021. So the country is starting to face Omicron in a state that the health care system ...