Health officials in the U.S. report the most coronavirus cases in the world at more than 234,000. But just about 8,850 recoveries have been recorded in the U.S. as of Thursday afternoon – less than 4% of the total cases reported.

The number of U.S. recoveries cited in trackers like that maintained by Johns Hopkins University probably isn't accurate for several reasons, analysts suggest, pointing to reasons both within and beyond the control of public health officials. The disparity could present a potentially muddled picture of how many patients are getting better.

"People are recovering from this, absolutely," says Casey Kelley of Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. "They absolutely are, and most people will. We just don't have the data because we don't have the manpower to monitor that right now."

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In order to be considered recovered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a person must be free of a fever without the help of medication, show improvement in respiratory conditions and receive negative results from two separate tests performed at least 24 hours apart.

Kelley says that because the U.S. has struggled to buy and produce enough tests, the testing priority has been on diagnoses, not recovery.

"The focus has been on getting resources to help the people who are really sick and really need it – not on repeating testing and making sure people are getting better," Kelley says.

Additionally, many people who showed symptoms but haven't been able to access tests were never counted and are now recovering from home, she says.

According to the CDC, a person can also be considered recovered without taking tests if they have gone at least three days without a fever, show improvement in other symptoms and wait seven days since symptoms began. However, preliminary data has shown that patients might be contagious for longer than seven days. Kelley says she would recommend someone stay home for 14 days after showing symptoms, if possible.

Kelley also points to potential false positive and negative test results as an issue. At the beginning of February, the CDC sent out a batch of diagnostic test kits that later proved to be faulty.

"Our testing is unfortunately misleading in a lot of ways, and there's a lot of errors in the data itself and the collection of it," Kelley says.

Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, called testing in the U.S. a "failing" last month.

"The idea of anybody getting it easily the way people in other countries are doing it, we're not set up for that," Fauci said at a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing, referring to coronavirus diagnostic tests. "Do I think we should be? Yes. But we're not."

Newer and faster tests are currently rolling out in the U.S., and people can expect to see numbers play catch-up in the next few weeks. As quicker test results start flowing in, the U.S. is also going through a backlog of tests from up to two weeks ago.

"As we get more data, we're going to have a better idea of what's happening," Kelley says.

While a country like China, which has already moved through the peak of its outbreak, boasts a high percentage of recoveries, the U.S. has been warned its worst is yet to come. President Donald Trump this week said hard days lie ahead, and his White House coronavirus task force predicted between 100,000-240,000 deaths from the disease.