Health experts criticise UK's failure to track recovered COVID-19 cases

The UK’s failure to report how many people have recovered from COVID-19 has been criticised by public health experts, who say a huge proportion of cases have remained “invisible” to the health service.

Britain is an outlier internationally in not reporting the number of people who have recovered from COVID-19 alongside statistics on deaths and numbers of identified cases. Chile is the only other nation not to share this information out of the 25 countries with the highest reported incidence.

A failure to monitor those who test positive for COVID-19 outside of hospital has left people feeling unsupported and alienated from the health system, the experts say. There is concern that because the majority of community cases have not been logged in patient records, it will be more challenging to research the long-term consequences of the disease.

Prof Devi Sridhar, the chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, said: “Not tracking people in the community, for me, [is] so astonishing. These people are completely invisible in the health system.”

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Source: The Guardian, 18 June 2020