Do Malta’s recovery statistics align with new cases of COVID-19?

Do Malta’s recovery statistics align with new cases of COVID-19? Some confusion still reigns over COVID-19 recovery statistics, after Malta began considering all cases to be officially “recovered” once a 14-day isolation period lapses.

Yet the requirement for a negative swab test at the end of any 14-day isolation period was removed on the recommendation of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

According to an ECDC technical report, current evidence indicates that patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 symptoms are unlikely to be infectious more than 10 days after symptom onset.

After this stage, the body’s immune system would have fought against the virus, and while the presence of viral fragments may be detected, those fragments are not infectious.

In short, even if a person tests positive 10 days after the onset of COVID-19 symptoms, it is unlikely that that person is contagious at that point.

Rapid testing

Contrary to popular belief, a rapid test does not need to be followed up by a PCR test in Malta. Once you test positive through a rapid test, you are considered positive until the 14-day isolation period is over.

However, persons from “specific settings for rapid detection of new cases” – such as the airport – require a confirmatory COVID-19 RT-PCR test, according to a standards document issued on February 12.

A separate ECDC technical report from last November highlights that rapid tests are best used when the time of symptom onset is known, and if the test is conducted up to five days after symptom onset. The ECDC has recommended that member states perform independent validations of the rapid antigen tests against RT-PCR.

A ministry spokesperson told MaltaToday that even if a PCR test taken after the rapid test is found to be negative, you are still considered to be positive. A person is only added to the recovery statistics 14 days after infection.

On a theoretical level, if new cases are considered recovered once the 14-day period lapses, new recoveries are expected to line up with the new cases from 14 days ago.

In reality, this is unlikely. The discrepancies are down to hospitalisations and deaths. Every death will result in a lower recovery figure compared to its respective ‘new cases’ figure from 14 days prior, while hospitalisations that don’t result in a death are an added recovery to a later date.