Americans who have recovered from the coronavirus (COVID-19) now outnumber those who died from the disease. As of reporting time, Johns Hopkins University‘s (JHU) running tally reports that over 153,000 American’s have recovered from the deadly outbreak, while around 63,000 have died.

This is seen as a promising sign for America, which reports five-figure numbers when it comes to new cases per day — five times as much as China officially reported during its peak.

Based on guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), a patient must have no fever without the help of medication for 72 hours to be considered recovered. This is in addition to showing improvement with their respiratory health and having two negative tests for the coronavirus taken at least 24 hours apart.

More people are now recovering

While deaths from the coronavirus in the U.S. continue to increase exponentially, the number of people recovering from it is now rising at a faster rate. Last week, the country had close to 109,000 recoveries and 55,000 deaths. This means that recoveries from the virus are 1.16 times higher than the previous week, while deaths are 1.11 times higher.

The true figure for recoveries, however, may be much higher. Thousands of patients have tested positive for antibodies but were never tested from the virus itself. This means that more people have gotten infected, and then eventually recovered from the coronavirus than official counts say.

“People are recovering from this, absolutely,” Dr. Casey Kelley, a clinical instructor at Feinberg School of Medicine, told U.S. News & World Report early April.

“They absolutely are, and most people will. We just don’t have the data because we don’t have the manpower to monitor that right now,” Kelley said.

Testing issues are keeping recovery numbers from being even higher

According to Kelley, because the U.S. has struggled to buy and produce enough testing kits, the priority in testing has been on catching new cases, not following up on possible recovered ones.

“The focus has been on getting resources to help the people who are really sick and really need it – not on repeating testing and making sure people are getting better,” said Kelley.

On top of this, she said that many people who showed symptoms of COVID-19 weren’t been able to access tests; these people were never counted and are now recovering at home.

Kelley identified potential false positive and negative tests as another issue. Back in February, the CDC sent out a batch of testing kits that later proved to be faulty. Meanwhile, some institutions that have sourced their own test kits from China have also found issues with them. (Related: Israel’s Health Ministry bans the use of Chinese coronavirus test kits.)

When Kelley made these statements last month, newer and faster tests were just beginning to roll out in the country. She said that the U.S. would get a better picture of its infections and recoveries once more tests rolled out.

“As we get more data, we’re going to have a better idea of what’s happening,” Kelley stated.

The U.S. leads the world in recovered cases

The new figures come following reports that the number of confirmed recoveries worldwide has reached 1 million. This means that roughly one-third of all diagnosed coronavirus patients have recovered from COVID-19.

The figures also show that, while the U.S. still leads the world in the number of positive coronavirus cases, it now also leads it in total recoveries.

Among other hard-hit countries, Spain and Germany are also showing large numbers of recoveries at around 112,000 and 123,000 respectively. The lower number of cases in these countries means that both have a higher percentage of recoveries than the United States.

Coronavirus patients in Italy and France are also slowly recovering; both countries are reporting around 75,000 and 50,000 recoveries, respectively.

The United Kingdom, on the other hand, is still struggling to deal with the disease, with the JHU tally reporting that less than 900 Britons have recovered. The U.K. currently has over 170,000 cases of the coronavirus.

Sources include:

DailyMail.co.uk

Coronavirus.JHU.edu

USNews.com