Coronavirus recovery: What do India's high COVID recovery numbers really mean? We explain

India now has the second-highest caseload of COVID-19 in the world, trailing next to the USA. Even as the pandemic continues to seep into the corners of the country, high recovery rates have always been in news. In fact, in a recent briefing, the Health Ministry also announced that India's recovery rates are one of the highest, worldwide and the mortality rate is also lower than the global average in the recent months. But, does a good recovery rate give hope that we'll soon be able to brush the pandemic aside? Does this mean positive news? Here's an explainer on the same, and what you should know about the current state of affairs.

India's infection numbers are at an all time high. Over the past 2-3 weeks, India has continued to record daily spikes, which have been the highest worldwide. What's interesting is that on the day the daily caseload touched 90,000 mark, India's recoveries touched an all-time high too. The high infection rate is also attributed to the increased testing being conducted across India. By those means, we have come from a time when our healthcare system was on the brink of collapse to being in a state where we can better manage it, a good recovery rate only means that we are somewhat, managing the situation better than before.

According to WHO, the global fatality rate for COVID-19 stands at 3-4%. This means that the global recovery rate would stand somewhere around 95-96% mark. While India's pandemic handling is strangely better than the USA, but there are countries with a higher recovery rate than us. Brazil, which is the third-worst affected nation by the pandemic has a recovery rate of 81%, just like Russia, Colombia, China and Pakistan.

Of all the states in India, Delhi's recovery rates are the highest, at around 90%. One of the reasons for such a positive recovery rate is being said to be the better managed healthcare system in the city. The home isolation method, which allowed patients with mild to moderate symptoms to recover at home, enabled hospitals to attend to severe infection cases on priority. This came to be the basis of the 'Delhi model' and was soon seen in other states as well.

While there is no scientific research that this model works for every patient, but it holds true to some extent that isolating and segregating patient load has helped healthcare professionals attend to at-risk patients earlier. All of this seems to have collectively helped boost recovery odds.

There's also another theory at play here. Over the past months, as experts have analysed cases in India, it has been speculated that a lot of infections in India are mild to moderate, as compared to other nations, which immediately means that recovery, from the disease, could be easier and quicker than in severe cases.

Unfortunately, a high recovery rate isn't the best indicator of a nation coping well against the pandemic.

In cases of pandemics, recovery rates are not considered to be an effective measure of the outbreak being contained well. As long as the disease isn't extremely fatal, all the people who do not die, ultimately recover, making high recovery rates kind of pointless.

Some epidemiologists also suggest that recovery rates naturally go up with an epidemic or pandemic spreading in a country. Depending on the diagnosis, only two things can happen. Either a person recovers or dies. So, as and when the epidemic rises, recoveries will also increase.

Considering that more than 50% of the population in India falls under the healthy age bracket (18-35), the odds of recovery and healing are naturally high, and not supportive of the country's response against the outbreak. Hence, the only thing that really gives India an edge is the low mortality rate and not the recovery rate.

Past pandemics have also suggested that recovery rates tend to go high with an outbreak's timeline, even without intervention. We might reach a point where we would have a 97-99% recovery rate in the coming months- but that isn't proof that COVID-19 would be over in the country.

Again, the answer to this is fairly complicated. India has a demographically diverse map. Unlike many countries, the pandemic is spreading in the country in a two-fold way. With the lockdown, we saw cases surge in urban areas. Now, we are also seeing a rise in cases amongst smaller cities, towns and villages, meaning that it is spreading in a far more dangerous manner. This is an indicator of what experts suggested a while ago- different cities in India will peak at a different time, making matters worse.

Healthcare system in India is still not the best, especially in smaller cities. So, if the pandemic isn't controlled in a better way, at the grassroot level, we might as well find ourselves reversing the trend of good recoveries. Ineffective management and excessive caseload may make recoveries difficult, in cases. Hence, we mustn't make comparisons with other countries right now and focus on adapting prevention and treatment tactics, on the personal as well as authoritarian level.

Right now, our focus should only remain on controlling the virus's positivity rate, preventing multiplication, having effective quarantining strategies, and most importantly, ensuring social distancing is practised in an effective manner, as the country resumes life in a new normal avatar.