Regional Resource Assessment During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy: Modeling Study

Abstract

Background COVID-19 has been declared a worldwide emergency and a pandemic by the World Health Organization. It started in China in December 2019, and it rapidly spread throughout Italy, which was the most affected country after China. The pandemic affected all countries with similarly negative effects on the population and health care structures. Objective The evolution of the COVID-19 infections and the way such a phenomenon can be characterized in terms of resources and planning has to be considered. One of the most critical resources has been intensive care units (ICUs) with respect to the infection trend and critical hospitalization. Methods We propose a model to estimate the needed number of places in ICUs during the most acute phase of the infection. We also define a scalable geographic model to plan emergency and future management of patients with COVID-19 by planning their reallocation in health structures of other regions. Results We applied and assessed the prediction method both at the national and regional levels. ICU bed prediction was tested with respect to real data provided by the Italian government. We showed that our model is able to predict, with a reliable error in terms of resource complexity, estimation parameters used in health care structures. In addition, the proposed method is scalable at different geographic levels. This is relevant for pandemics such as COVID-19, which has shown different case incidences even among northern and southern Italian regions. Conclusions Our contribution can be useful for decision makers to plan resources to guarantee patient management, but it can also be considered as a reference model for potential upcoming waves of COVID-19 and similar emergency situations.

Exploiting the molecular basis of age and gender differences in outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 infections

“…Deaths from COVID-19 occur predominantly among older adults. COVID-19 also appears to be more lethal for men rather than women [13] , [23] , [36] , [62] . This feature has been found in China, as well as in Europe and in the United States of America, [69] .…”

“…On 11th March 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared SARS-CoV-2 as a pandemic. Current data revealed that the impact of COVID-19 presents certain peculiar aspects in different nations that have been deeply investigated [23] , [36] . Some authors hypothesised that virus mutations were responsible for these differences [70] , [48] , [29] , [12] .…”

Exploiting Molecular Basis of Age and Gender Differences in Outcomes of SARS-CoV-2 Infections

“…On 11th March 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared SARS-CoV-2 as a pandemic. Current data revealed that the impact of COVID-19 presents certain peculiar aspects in different nations that have been deeply investigated [9, 10]. Some authors hypothesised that virus mutations were responsible for these differences [11, 12, 13, 14].…”

Laboratory biomarker predictors for disease progression and outcome among Egyptian COVID-19 patients

“…18,26 However, only 26/112 patients over 60 years old were included in the current study, which can explain the contrast between our results and those obtained by previous studies that reported a significant effect of both variables on disease severity. 23,[27][28][29][30][31] Similar to previous results, the presence of hypertension and/or diabetes is considered an associated risk factor for disease severity and poor outcome. 1,6,7,16,28,[32][33][34] Low oxygen saturation and high respiratory rate increased the liability of ICU disease severity and fatal consequences, which agrees with other previous findings.…”