As Of Last Week, The US Has More Recovered COVID Cases Than Active Ones

We crossed an important milestone last week when the number of recovered COVID cases surpassed the number of active cases.  This hasn't been widely reported because the US doesn't have an official recovered cases count. 

Sites like Worldometers, where I pull much of my data, include a recovered cases count, but they admit this is a very imperfect count because of the inconsistency that different countries report their recovered cases.  In my last report, I graphed US recovered cases on the assumption that recovery is 21 days after symptom onset.   This also isn't perfect because some hospitalized cases can take much longer to recover, but also many people are tested and confirmed well after symptom onset an so it seems like a conservative number (NC has started reporting recoveries using a 14 day estimate). 

If you subtract the recovered cases and fatalities from the current case count, you can also get an active case count.  Here's graph showing the four numbers:

Our active cases as of today are 38% of our total cases reported -- a little more than 1/3.   For comparison, I added a recovery calculation and % active cases to my current data table. The % active cases gives a good read on the progress a country has made in the pandemic. Here's a summary:

Country	Days post 100 cases	Calculated Recoveries using 21 day period	Calculated Active Cases	% Active Cases
USA	73	801,245	543,906	38.03%
Italy	81	158,867	32,131	14.47%
Spain	73	158,867	32,131	21.42%
Germany	74	10,443	260	12.04%
France	75	185,920	58,071	10.24%
UK	70	145,268	20,969	39.89%
Canada	62	132,754	18,232	41.74%
Sweden	69	104,892	91,627	41.97%
India	62	36,808	30,168	70.48%
Indonesia	59	13,315	12,134	49.64%
Philippines	61	20,488	55,016	39.91%
Vietnam	53	6,747	7,663	6.94%
Thailand	59	6,209	4,637	5.90%
Malaysia	66	268	20	17.35%
Singapore	73	2,783	178	55.90%
South Africa	58	5,494	1,176	67.26%
Argentina	56	11,157	14,168	50.07%
Australia	64	3,734	8,121	4.48%
Chile	59	3,106	3,444	65.64%
New Zealand	53	6,569	313	3.07%

I hope to post a follow up with recovery data for NC soon.