30% of those tested positive 2 weeks ago have not recovered
As of 5 p.m. on April 26, 22% (5,914) of India’s 26,917 COVID-19 patients had recovered. The recovery rate in the country has doubled, from 11.9% on April 16. However, 30% of the patients that had tested positive until 2 weeks ago (April 12) have not yet recovered, an IndiaSpend analysis of ministry data shows.
Two weeks is the median time from onset to clinical recovery for mild cases, a February 28 report released by the World Health Organization said. Depending on the severity of the disease, patients can get better in less than 14 days or can take upto six weeks or more.
For our analysis, we transposed daily recoveries against the total confirmed cases detected two weeks ago to understand the lag in recoveries. We looked at the data for five states and two cities in India that have the most cases, and three countries (the US, Brazil and Russia) that had their highest daily increase in the last two days, like India. Here’s what we found:
Among the five states--Maharashtra, Gujarat, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan--where two-thirds of the COVID-19 cases have been detected, Madhya Pradesh has the biggest lag in recoveries at 14 days--62.7%.
Two states with the most cases--Maharashtra and Gujarat--have a larger gap than in India. Maharashtra with the most cases (8,068) has a lag of 38.9%, followed by Gujarat (34.7%), Rajasthan (26.2%) and Delhi (18.7%).
In Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, there has been a consistent lag in recoveries for 12 days now. On two days (April 22 and April 23), Delhi had reported more recoveries than the cases it had detected 14 days ago. In Gujarat, a similar trend was seen on April 23 and 24. In Rajasthan, there were more recoveries between April 14-16 and since then, there has been a lag.
Mumbai, which makes up for 5,194 of the cases in Maharashtra, has a smaller gap (35.9%) than the state and the country.
Among the countries that were analysed, the United States had the biggest gap of 83.5%. Two weeks ago, on April 12, there were 551,953 positive patients. As of April 26, 91,001 had recovered.
In Russia, there is a 57.1% gap with 6,767 recoveries and 15,770 positive cases. In contrast, patients in Brazil have recovered faster than in two weeks. Over 30,152 patients have recovered so far, 35.9% more than the number of patients admitted (22,192) two weeks ago.
