![]() #SIMPLE MATH TEST FULL#Even with full personal protective equipment, health care workers are becoming infected while treating patients with Covid-19. Shortages of these two resources - beds and masks - don’t stand in isolation but compound each other’s severity. It’s unlikely we’d be able to ramp up domestic production or importation of new masks to keep pace with this level of demand, especially since most countries will be simultaneously experiencing the same crises and shortages. If only 6 million of them are working on any given day (certainly an underestimate) they would burn through the national N95 stockpile in two days if each worker only got one mask per day, which is neither sanitary nor pragmatic. As Covid-19 cases saturate nearly every state and county, virtually all health care workers will be expected to wear masks. has a national stockpile of 12 million N95 masks and 30 million surgical masks for a health care workforce of about 18 million. For the sake of this exercise, though, let’s assume that all other causes of hospitalization remain constant. As the health care system becomes increasingly burdened and prescription medication shortages kick in, people with chronic conditions that are normally well-managed may find themselves slipping into states of medical distress requiring hospitalization and even intensive care. If only 5% of cases require it, we can make it until about May 16, and a 2.5% rate gets us to May 22.īut this presumes there is no uptick in demand for beds from non-Covid-19 causes, a dubious presumption. If 20% of cases require hospitalization, we run out of beds by about May 4. If I’m wrong by a factor of two regarding the fraction of severe cases, that only changes the timeline of bed saturation by six days (one doubling time) in either direction. And with many patients requiring weeks of care, turnover will slow to a crawl as beds fill with Covid-19 patients. Support STAT: If you value our coronavirus coverage, please consider making a one-time contribution to support our journalism.Īt a 10% hospitalization rate, all hospital beds in the U.S. also has high rates of chronic conditions like cardiovascular disease and diabetes, which are also associated with the severity of Covid-19. population is younger than Italy’s, and has lower rates of smoking - which may compromise lung health and contribute to poorer prognosis - than both Italy and China. In Italy, the statistics so far are even more dismal: More than half of infected individuals require hospitalization and about 10% need treatment in the ICU.įor this exercise, I’m conservatively assuming that only 10% of cases warrant hospitalization, in part because the U.S. But among 44,000 cases in China, about 15% required hospitalization and 5% ended up in critical care. The majority of people with Covid-19 can be managed at home. That leaves about 300,000 beds available nationwide. At any given time, about 68% of them are occupied. With a population of 330 million, this is about 1 million hospital beds. has about 2.8 hospital beds per 1,000 people (South Korea and Japan, two countries that have seemingly thwarted the exponential case growth trajectory, have more than 12 hospital beds per 1,000 people even China has 4.3 per 1,000). What does a case load of this size mean for health care system? That’s a big question, but just two facets - hospital beds and masks - can gauge how Covid-19 will affect resources. In the absence of extreme interventions like those implemented in China, this trend likely won’t slow significantly until hitting at least 1% of the population, or about 3.3 million Americans. cases by the end of April 2 million by May 7 4 million by May 13 and so on.Īs the health care system becomes saturated with cases, it will become increasingly difficult to detect, track, and contain new transmission chains. That means we are looking at about 1 million U.S. Confirmed cases may appear to rise faster (or slower) in the short term as diagnostic capabilities are ramped up (or not), but this is how fast we can expect actual new cases to rise in the absence of substantial mitigation measures. We can expect a doubling of cases every six days, according to several epidemiological studies. Given the substantial underdiagnosis at present due to limitations in testing for the coronavirus, let’s say there are 2,000 current cases, a conservative starting bet. Exclusive analysis of biotech, pharma, and the life sciences Learn MoreĬoronavirus spread could last into next year, but impact could be blunted, CDC official saysĪs of March 8, about 500 cases of Covid-19 had been diagnosed in the U.S. ![]()
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