The little we know: an overview of bits and pieces

HUNGARY - In Brief 30 Mar 2020 by Istvan Racz

---

The Covid-19 epidemic has still failed to explode in Hungary (thanks God). The cumulative number of total cases was 447 this morning, and it is slowly building up day by day, without any notable acceleration. What is accelerating, though, is the number of virus tests (currently at 13301), given the protocol followed by the domestic authorities (test suspicious cases, the same as WHO's current recommendation) is pushing them into intensifying testing activity, as the number of confirmed cases increases. Currently, they need 30 tests on average to catch one infected person, as opposed to two infected out of nine tests in Italy, which suggests that the unknown crowd of unrecorded infected people cannot be terribly high. As national transmission rates and even the absolute numbers of newly confirmed cases are falling in Western Europe, there is some hope, which is getting stronger every day, that Hungary might eventually get away without a major outbreak of the epidemic.At present, very little is known about the economic impact of the crisis, in terms of statistical data. The news on widespread stoppages all around the manufacturing sector, tourism, catering, entertainment & sports, transportation are still at an anecdotal level. Likewise, retail sales are suspected to have gone up initially, as a result of some panic buying, but by now, everything has calmed down and the upcoming Easter rush on shops and plazas is likely to be much weaker than usually (mostly because shops, except for those selling food and drugs are closed, and people are now legally instructed to stay at home outside their working hours). Most recently, the February employment data was out, but that sti...