Potential demand for respirators and surgical masks during a hypothetical influenza pandemic in the United States.

ABSTRACT:

Background

To inform planning for an influenza pandemic, we estimated US demand for N95 filtering facepiece respirators (respirators) by healthcare and emergency services personnel and need for surgical masks by pandemic patients seeking care.

Methods

We used a spreadsheet-based model to estimate demand for 3 scenarios of respirator use: base case (usage approximately follows epidemic curve), intermediate demand (usage rises to epidemic peak and then remains constant), and maximum demand (all healthcare workers use respirators from pandemic onset). We assumed that in the base case scenario, up to 16 respirators would be required per day per intensive care unit patient and 8 per day per general ward patient. Outpatient healthcare workers and emergency services personnel would

SUBMITTER: Carias C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7314226 | biostudies-literature | 2015 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature