Good news on Covid at last

HUNGARY - In Brief 05 Apr 2021 by Istvan Racz

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The lockdown measures introduced on March 8, combined with an accelerated pace of vaccination, finally appear to work. It took a week that the reinfection rate (the 7-day average of the ratio of daily new infections to the stock of active cases a week earlier) reached its peak at 7.43% on March 15, and since then it has fallen almost monotonously to 3.42% in today's report. The 7-day average of daily new infections peaked at 9253 on March 26, and it has decreased steeply since then, to 6961 this morning:As you can see on the foregoing chart, Covid's third wave is now taking the shape of a Christmas tree, and very positively we are drawing the right side of that tree now. The positivity ratio of Covid tests is falling similarly. The daily number of Covid deaths, hospitalisations and patients in serious conditions is also decreasing, though at a much less impressive rate. However, the latters are lagged indicators, and so no steep downturn by them should be expected initially.The stock of active cases (around 250k this morning) is still growing, and it is most likely to remain so until the reinfection rate has shrunk below 2.5% on a sustainable basis.This latest improvement is actually above expectations, and it is already seen to reinforce the government's determination to start gradual reopening quite soon, as planned. It has been decided already that as soon as the number of those vaccinated (with a first shot) has reached 2.5 million (close to 27% of the whole population), the night curfew will be reduced by two hours and all shops and most services will be allowed to open under a per-square-meter limitation to the number of visitors at each time. Now that the number...