“why is the US at only 24K recovered? Is this a reporting issue or is there something else”
Somewhat a reporting issue, but this disease takes so long to resolve that recoveries will occur slowly over weeks and even months. There are still 70-80 folks from the Diamond Princess that have not yet recovered.
And the standards for “recovered” are pretty subjective. Kicked out of the hospital might be a more accurate description. Plus, in SK some 90 “recovered” folks have relapsed or been reinfected. Were they recovered and got reinfected, or did the virus go dormant for a while? Both seem to be possible.
Last time I looked, the UK stopped reporting recovered. Or at least worldometers.info has for the UK.
Are they actually calling back and retesting all that tested positive and getting a negative test now ? I doubt it, but wouldn't that have to occur to get a true 'recovered' number. Sounds like they are probably only counting discharged hospitalized positives which is a small number of the almost 500,000 tested positive.