March 30, 2020

Forecasting COVID-19 impact on hospital bed-days, ICU-days, ventilator days and deaths by US state in the next 4 months.

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Modeling and Prediction

• Murray et al used data on confirmed COVID-19 deaths from WHO websites and local and national governments to develop a statistical model forecasting deaths and hospital utilization against capacity by state in the US over the next 4 months. The model predicts excess demand for up to 64,175 total beds, 17,309 ICU beds, and 19,481 ventilators at the peak of COVID-19 in the second week of April. A total of 81,114 deaths is expected in the US from COVID-19 over the same months and will drop thereafter below 10 deaths per day between May 31 and June 6. 

• They predict that, even with social distancing measures enacted and sustained, the peak demand for hospital services will substantially exceed capacity. There is an urgent need to temporarily increase capacity of health facilities while implementing, enforcing, and maintaining these measures to mitigate hospital system overload and prevent deaths.

Murray et al. (Mar 25, 2020): Forecasting COVID-19 impact on hospital bed-days, ICU-days, ventilator days and deaths by US state in the next 4 months. IHME COVID-19 health service utilization forecasting team. Pre-print downloaded Mar 30 from http://www.healthdata.org/sites/default/files/files/research_articles/2020/covid_paper_MEDRXIV-2020-043752v1-Murray.pdf