As coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) spreads across the world, the intensive care unit (ICU) community must prepare for the challenges associated with this pandemic. Streamlining of workflows for rapid diagnosis and isolation, clinical management, and infection prevention will matter not only to patients with COVID-19, but also to health-care workers and other patients who are at risk from nosocomial transmission. Management of acute respiratory failure and haemodynamics is key. ICU practitioners, hospital administrators, governments, and policy makers must prepare for a substantial increase in critical care bed capacity, with a focus not just on infrastructure and supplies, but also on staff management. Critical care triage to allow the rationing of scarce ICU resources might be needed. Researchers must address unanswered questions, including the role of repurposed and experimental therapies. Collaboration at the local, regional, national, and international level offers the best chance of survival for the critically ill.

Objectives To assess the compliance of Asian intensive care units and hospitals to the Surviving Sepsis Campaign's resuscitation and management bundles. Secondary objectives were to evaluate the impact of compliance on mortality and the organisational characteristics of hospitals that were associated with higher compliance.

Objective: To assess the number of adult critical care beds in Asian countries and regions in relation to population size. Design: Cross-sectional observational study. Setting: Twenty-three Asian countries and regions, covering 92.1% of the continent’s population. Participants: Ten low-income and lower-middle–income economies, five upper-middle–income economies, and eight high-income economies according to the World Bank classification. Interventions: Data closest to 2017 on critical care beds, including ICU and intermediate care unit beds, were obtained through multiple means, including government sources, national critical care societies, colleges, or registries, personal contacts, and extrapolation of data. Measurements and Main Results: Cumulatively, there were 3.6 critical care beds per 100,000 population. The median number of critical care beds per 100,000 population per country and region was significantly lower in low- and lower-middle–income economies (2.3; interquartile range, 1.4–2.7) than in upper-middle–income economies (4.6; interquartile range, 3.5–15.9) and high-income economies (12.3; interquartile range, 8.1–20.8) (p = 0.001), with a large variation even across countries and regions of the same World Bank income classification. This number was independently predicted by the World Bank income classification on multivariable analysis, and significantly correlated with the number of acute hospital beds per 100,000 population (r 2 = 0.19; p = 0.047), the universal health coverage service coverage index (r 2 = 0.35; p = 0.003), and the Human Development Index (r 2 = 0.40; p = 0.001) on univariable analysis. Conclusions: Critical care bed capacity varies widely across Asia and is significantly lower in low- and lower-middle–income than in upper-middle–income and high-income countries and regions.

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