Opinion

Let us know disease recovery rate

Posted April 04, 2020 1:00 am

In his daily COVID-19 news conference on Monday, March 30, Gov. Pritzker was asked by a reporter the current rate of recovery of COVID-19 patients. He stated that the number was not available because it was "somewhat more difficult" to determine which patients had recovered because they don't tend to report their recoveries to their physicians. The implication is that the state is not tracking any of the 5,057 patients positively diagnosed with COVID-19 since it entered Illinois (with the exception of the 72 unfortunate deaths). Without reporting the recovery rate, the number of diagnosed cases to-date doesn't provide useful information because it's safe to assume that many, if not most, of these patients have recovered fully and are not vying for precious medical resources. Locating and tracking these recovered patients is even more important given the promising results of plasma transfusions into critically ill COVID-19 patients.

Randy Harris

St. Charles

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