A recent study of the prevalence of COVID-19 in Indiana is helping health officials better understand its recovery rate. During state officials’ COVID-19 briefing Wednesday, State Health Commissioner Dr. Kris Box said there are typically two ways to determine whether someone’s recovered.
“Number one: you need to be at least . . . 10 days, now, from the onset of your symptoms, and an additional 72 hours, for sure, from any of your symptoms,” Box explained. “And that means no fever – you can’t be using aspirin or Motrin or Tylenol to bring that down.”
The other way is to look for two negative COVID-19 tests within 24 hours, but Box said that presents a few problems. “Sometimes, we’d find people many, many days, 21 to 30 days out, that are still showing positive,” she explained. “But if we were actually culturing those people, we were not finding actively-replicating virus, so we did not believe that they were infectious at that time.”
Box noted that the Indiana University Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health’s study has shown that many people have recovered, and many of them never even realized they were infected.
Principal Investigator Dr. Nir Menachemi said 1.1 percent of study participants were found to have antibodies. “So really what it’s telling us is that 1.1 percent of people’s bodies mounted an immune response to the virus, and so the word ‘recovered’ is more clinical and I think Dr. Box covered it. When we’re talking about it in the population, the number of people who have been infected and are now beyond that infection was that 1.1 percent,” Menachemi said.
The Indiana State Department of Health’s COVID-19 Data Report doesn’t specify how many COVID-19 patients have since recovered, but the Regenstrief Institute does provide information about how many have been discharged from the hospital. Governor Holcomb promised to have more recovery data during this afternoon’s press conference.
