Coronavirus: when will Singapore’s recovery rate of 15 per cent pick up?
- Singapore has nearly 25,000 infections and only 15 per cent of patients are deemed to have recovered
- Experts say the city state has strict criteria for defining recovery and they expect this figure to rise as more migrant workers are discharged from medical care facilities
Almost nine in 10 of Singapore’s Covid-19 patients are still being kept in isolation at hospitals or care facilities, equating to a recovery rate of just 15 per cent.
So why the disparity? The answer, medical experts say, lies in the stricter definition of recovery in Singapore. It is also about timing, as Singapore’s surge in cases has happened recently. When it had 100-odd cases in March, the recovery rate was 70 per cent.
In the city state of 5.7 million people, anyone who tests positive for Covid-19 is hospitalised or placed in an isolation facility with medical teams. They are discharged only when they stop exhibiting symptoms, when it has been more than six days since the onset of their symptoms and when they test negative for the coronavirus twice more than 24 hours apart.