How to interpret worldometer

[EnterFunnyNameHere]

Hi,

I've been using the UK worldometer site as part of my daily 15min "read how fucked we are" checks:

www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

Does anyone know why we have so few "closed cases" in the UK as yet? Are we just to early on in the process or is it artificial because we're not testing (and so confirming) non hospitalised cases?

TIA

I am curious too.

Recently infected, still ill?

Trying to work it.out from that graph and the timeline....

Because we're so early into it. They say around a week to develop symptoms - it initially starts as a cough/fever/headaches etc. A week later, some get better, while some develop pneumonia. Those who have pneumonia could have it for weeks or months, so they're ongoing.

That's why the fatality rate looks so high.

Early in the process
Hardly anyone can be classified as a closed case yet in the UK with incubation/infection-recovery times.
The first case in my town in Italy was officially "cleared" this week. He was diagnosed about 4-5 weeks ago.

@SnoozyLou yeah that makes sense. I was mostly asking because that seemed to be why the fatality rate looks so high but it seems that's only closed cases.

I wonder though how they are tracking recoveries (not just uk) if they aren't consistently testing people who are getting better without medical intervention.

I suppose that's always a data limitation...

I don't think we'll know for months, even years, what % of the UK population has cleared it if they only track hospitalised cases. We may never know. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me and I imagine other countries won't want to touch us with a barge pole unless they start again and there's more transparency.

Trump was pretty quick to add us to the list, wasn't he.

My daughter tells me they test three times to say you’re recovered and they Aren’t doing the testing hence why the cases stay open.