District Level-Based Mean Differences in Recovery Speed from COVID-19 Infection in Mpumalanga Province

The aim of this analysis was to examine mean differences of the speed of recovery (days) from COVID-19 infection by case-patients based in three different districts in Mpumalanga province. A sample of 5723 case-patients distributed across three districts in the province; namely Gert Sibande, Ehlanzeni and Nkangala. Using the date at which the result confirming positivity for each case was received and the date at which discharge occurred, the DATEDIF() function in Microsoft Excel was used to calculate the speed of recovery, measured by number of days. The speed (time) from infection to recovery was thus measured as the number of days from first positive to first negative SARSCoV-2 PCR test result. Data was processed in Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21 for windows prior to conducting statistical analysis. The mean differences in the speed of recovery across the three districts were analysed using the mean comparison Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) technique. Mean and standard deviation (mean ± sd) statistics show that cases in Gert Sibande had the quickest average recovery speed of 16.43 ± 7.14 days, followed by Ehlanzeni with 17.07 ± 7.18 days, while cases in Nkangala had the marginally longest recovery time of 17.09 ± 7.56 days at 95% confidence interval. The F (2, 531.96) statistic (= 4.297; p \u003c 0.05) and the Tukey HSD post-hoc results indicate significant differences in the speed of recovery by case-patients in the three districts. The mean statistics results demonstrate that the mean recovery speed of case-patients in Gert Sibande differed significantly from average recovery speeds of case-patients in Ehlanzeni and Nkangala. Keywords : Recovery Speed from COVID-19, Mpumalanga DOI: 10.7176/JHMN/80-17 Publication date: September 30 th 2020