Navigating hospitals safely through the COVID-19 epidemic tide: Predicting case load for adjusting bed capacity.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The pressures exerted by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic pose an unprecedented demand on healthcare services. Hospitals become rapidly overwhelmed when patients requiring life-saving support outpace available capacities.

Objective

We describe methods used by a university hospital to forecast case loads and time to peak incidence.

Methods

We developed a set of models to forecast incidence among the hospital catchment population and to describe the COVID-19 patient hospital-care pathway. The first forecast utilized data from antecedent allopatric epidemics and parameterized the care-pathway model according to expert opinion (ie, the static model). Once sufficient local data were available, trends for the time-dependent effective reproduction

SUBMITTER: Donker T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8160497 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature