Testing and isolation to prevent overloaded healthcare facilities and reduce death rates in the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in Italy.

ABSTRACT:

Background

During the first wave of COVID-19, hospital and intensive care unit beds got overwhelmed in Italy leading to an increased death burden. Based on data from Italian regions, we disentangled the impact of various factors contributing to the bottleneck situation of healthcare facilities, not well addressed in classical SEIR-like models. A particular emphasis was set on the undetected fraction (dark figure), on the dynamically changing hospital capacity, and on different testing, contact tracing, quarantine strategies.

Methods

We first estimated the dark figure for different Italian regions. Using parameter estimates from literature and, alternatively, with parameters derived from a fit to the initial phase of COVID-19 spread, the model was optimized to fit data (infec

SUBMITTER: Bandyopadhyay A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9237078 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature