Past the peak of the Omicron wave?

HUNGARY - In Brief 08 Feb 2022 by Istvan Racz

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Some indicators seem to suggest that the peak of the local 5th (Omicron) wave of Covid has been just passed, whereas others, normally lagged indicators, have not shown any sign of improvement yet. Two things are for sure, anyway: hospitalisation and death rates are very much lower with Omicron than with earlier variants, and that the current (otherwise quite substantial) burden on health care staff and facilities remain way short of past peak levels, and so no tightening of Covid rules seem to be necessary or imminent.Just briefly on the details: the speed, at which the disease is spreading, measured by the reinfection rate (an easy-to-estimate younger brother of R0) has been falling monotonously since January 26, and the officially recorded number of infections has been decreasing as well quite steeply since January 31. The hit ratio of virus testing has been also edging down since the same date (end-January), although this started from a very high 40.5% (!) and is still at 39%. What is still moving up is the daily number of Covid deaths (though it is still no higher than it was one year ago, in the brief low period between the local 2nd and 3rd waves), and the stock number of Covid patients currently in hospital (this also falls substantially short of earlier peak levels). Should the current downtrend of new infections continue, it would be reasonable to expect that deaths and hospitalisations would also make a downturn within another week or two.Given that the first Omicron cases, which set the local 5th wave on, were recorded officially in early January only, the downturn of new infections may appear to be suspiciously early. But epidemiologists and mathematicians ...