The GCI Recovery Index Methodology Update – 21 August 2020 (Serbia, Sweden, Vietnam)

We are pleased to update that we have applied a derivative calculation to ascertain the Active Cases and by extension Recoveries for Serbia and Sweden. This methodology is similar to the calculation we are currently applying to Netherlands and United Kingdom data since 23 July. These datasets currently are not recorded by Johns Hopkins University and many other data aggregators.

For Serbia, we recognise that the Republic of Serbia’s Ministry of Health in collaboration with the Dr. Milan Jovanovic Batut Institute of Health publish a daily dashboard which includes information on patients on ventilators. As mentioned in our previous methodology update, we make reference to the World Health Organisation Report (Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)) dated February 2020, which indicates that “…the median time from onset to clinical recovery for mild cases is approximately 2 weeks and is 3-6 weeks for patients with severe or critical disease.” For the purpose of the GCI recovery index calculations, we have taken the sum of 3 weeks of new cases and the latest reported total of patients on ventilators (the latter as a representative of severe cases). (Please refer to latest GCI Methodology Update on 4 September 2020 for the latest update.)

For Sweden, we have recognised that the Public Health Agency of Sweden (Folkhälsomyndigheten) updates  daily new hospitalised individuals. However, hospital discharge information is unavailable. As such, we have taken a conservative estimate that serious cases can be represented by the cumulative daily recorded hospitalised individuals for 2 weeks from Day -35 to Day -22 (4 to 5 weeks ago). This assumption is also built on the  same World Health Organisation Report which indicates that “…the median time from onset to clinical recovery… is 3-6 weeks for patients with severe or critical disease.” For the purpose of the GCI recovery index calculations, we have taken the sum of 3 weeks of new cases and the aforementioned moving sum of hospitalised COVID19 patients (the latter as a representative of severe cases).

We have also manually updated the latest cumulative test data for Vietnam based on an official press release by the Vietnamese Ministry of Health that records that up to 817,208 tests have been conducted up to 19th August 2020. Currently the Ministry of Health does not update this information regularly and we will endeavour to reflect this upon data being made available in the shortest time possible.

This new calculation method will be applied from 21st August onwards to the GCI Recovery Index scores but will not be retrospectively updated.

We hope that with this methodology update, the data for Serbia, Sweden and Vietnam will better represent the efforts the respective Governments are currently undertaking in their efforts to battle this pandemic.

Sources:
• Serbia Data: https://covid19.rs/homepage-english/
• Sweden Data: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa
• Vietnam Test Data Update: https://ncov.moh.gov.vn/web/guest/-/cong-suat-xet-nghiem-covid-19-cua-viet-nam-uoc-nang-len-ro-ret
• WHO Report: https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-china-joint-mission-on-covid-19-final-report.pdf