VALDOSTA – COVID-19 numbers are issued by the state health department twice a day, but one piece of data does not appear: recoveries.

Recovery information remains sparse from state and local officials, so The Valdosta Daily Times asked local and state experts why that data has not been made available.

To Dr. William Grow, South Health District director, said part of the reason is the coronavirus can be present in varying degrees within patients thereby making each person’s recovery slightly different.

“Recovery itself is therefore due to the age of the patient, when they got the disease, whether they have any co-existing illnesses … but recovery would be when that patient is no longer a danger to himself or others,” Grow said. 

Generally, the district considers someone recovered from the coronavirus if they go 72 hours without fever, seven days after their initial positive test and all symptoms have improved, said Kristin Patten, district public information officer. 

In a previous story about COVID-19 recovery data, Dr. Jian Zhang, professor of epidemiology at Georgia Southern University, described the word recovery involving COVID-19 as vague and used differently across communities.

“In most cases, (it is) meaningless to public health,” he said.

Though the district does have a standing definition for recovery, Grow said related data has been mostly estimates so far.

“The recovery rates that I have seen have almost been a guesstimation,” he said. “I’m not sure anybody has exact figures on that no matter what country they’re even in.”

Nancy Nydam, director of communications for the Georgia Department of Public Health, said, “The bottom line is info on positive tests and deaths is easily accessible and updated often by the CDC, state health departments and county health districts – the data on recoveries is much harder to quantify,” she said.

Not only do vagaries about the data exist, but getting the requisite amount of staff to follow up daily with infected patients isn’t possible in addition to other duties, Patten said. 

“The reason we aren’t reporting recovery rate is because of the manpower that would go behind it,” she said.

That manpower remains focused on contact tracing and spread prevention. With resources designated to those two measures, district health staff do not have time to make daily check-ins with each COVID-19 patient, she said. Similarly, although the GDPH knows when people become hospitalized, it does not receive notifications when their care ends and when they are released from the hospital, Nydam said.

Another issue, according to Grow, is the significant amount of patients who present no symptoms of the coronavirus. Nydam said one in four people with COVID-19 do not have symptoms. 

One way to rectify who has the disease is through increased testing.

“While recovery data we understand is something (people) want, we also don’t want anyone to have a false sense of security because we do not know truly how many across the state, across the country have this because so many people haven’t been tested,” Patten said.

Nydam echoed Patten that since most Georgians have not been tested for COVID-19, public health officials do not truly know how many people are infected, and they are unable to say with any accuracy how many patients have recovered.

There is some positive momentum on the testing front as testing in Georgia doubled in less than two weeks, according to data from the GDPH daily status report. 

In the South Health District, free testing is now available in all 10 of its counties. People interested in getting tested for COVID-19 can call their local health department or the South Health District COVID-19 hotline at 844-955-1499 to be screened and to schedule their appointment, according to a statement released earlier this week.

Testing is by appointment only and is available in Lowndes County 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 8:30 a.m. to noon Saturdays.