Coronavirus recovery numbers not being tracked by all

It’s a coronavirus metric that anxious Southern Nevadans might find encouraging, but one that’s difficult to find.

The number of people in Nevada with the virus who have recovered from it.

Neither the Southern Nevada Health District nor the Nevada Department of Health and Human Services tracks recoveries on coronavirus web updates, while the Washoe County Health District does. But as emotionally comforting as they might be, recoveries aren’t a key metric in combating a disease outbreak, said Brian Labus, an assistant professor in UNLV’s School of Public Health.

Recoveries are implicitly accounted for in the tallies of total cases and deaths that health districts do keep, said Labus, a former senior investigator for the Southern Nevada Health District who also serves on the governor’s medical advisory team for COVID-19. “What we’re really interested in is how many people get sick and how many died and, obviously, if you don’t die from it you’re going to recover.”

But during a disease outbreak, recovery numbers aren’t vital “in terms of identifying risk in the community,” Labus said, and are not “something we use in planning or talking about risk.”

In addition, “recovered” is a metric that isn’t necessarily as clear-cut as it might seem. For coronavirus, Labus said, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s criteria for recovery include being fever-free with improvement in respiratory symptoms for 72 hours.

Those are the same criteria used in Washoe County. Scott Oxarart, spokesman for the Washoe County Health District, said the district defines recovery as “resolution of fever without the use of fever-reducing medications” and improvement in such respiratory symptoms as coughing and shortness of breath over a specific period of time.

However, Labus said tracking such information during a disease outbreak would use resources that might better be applied elsewhere.

“In order to know what was happening, you would have to follow every single (person) within the outbreak to see where they are,” he said. “You can always do that at the end of the outbreak and get the same numbers because you don’t need it right now.”

As of Thursday, the Southern Nevada Health District reported 1,458 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 38 deaths in Clark County. The Southern Nevada Health District “has not reported on the number of recovered cases of COVID-19,” according to spokeswoman Stephanie Bethel.

“Based on the number of cases that are likely in our community as well as the numbers of confirmed cases and contact investigations being done now, we would not be able to provide information about that,” she said.

The Nevada Department of Health and Human Services also is not tracking recoveries but “has posted information on the number of people tested, cases that are positive/detectable, and deaths,” according to spokeswoman Shannon Litz.

Contact John Przybys at jprzybys@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0280. Follow @JJPrzybys on Twitter.