Analysing how changes in the health status of healthcare workers affects epidemic outcomes.

ABSTRACT: During a disease outbreak, healthcare workers (HCWs) are essential to treat infected individuals. However, these HCWs are themselves susceptible to contracting the disease. As more HCWs get infected, fewer are available to provide care for others, and the overall quality of care available to infected individuals declines. This depletion of HCWs may contribute to the epidemic's severity. To examine this issue, we explicitly model declining quality of care in four differential equation-based susceptible, infected and recovered-type models with vaccination. We assume that vaccination, recovery and survival rates are affected by quality of care delivered. We show that explicitly modelling HCWs and accounting for declining quality of care significantly alters model-predicted disease outcomes, s

SUBMITTER: Phadke I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7925990 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature