Coronavirus: Tucson Has Acute Hospital Bed Shortage, Report Says

TUCSON, AZ — Hospitals in Tucson need to expand capacity to handle an onslaught of patients sick with COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus, according to a new report from ProPublica that underscores an acute shortage of hospital beds nationwide as confirmed cases of the virus increase nationwide.

The report, using data compiled by the Harvard Global Health Institute, says Tucson would need to add another 2,750 beds over a 12-month period, or 2.3 times the number that currently exist. That’s assuming a “moderate” outbreak in which 40 percent of Tucson area residents require hospitalization for coronavirus infections.

In most scenarios, "vast communities in America are not prepared to take care of the COVID-19 patients showing up," said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the health institute and leader of a team of researchers that developed the analysis.

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Nationally, 6,519 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed as of Wednesday morning, 21 of them in Arizona, according to a Johns Hopkins University real-time coronavirus case tracker. There have been 115 coronavirus-related deaths, none in Arizona.

Under the Harvard team’s definition of a “moderate scenario” — where 40 percent of the adult population contracts the disease over a 12-month period — 98.8 million Americans would develop a coronavirus infection, though many will have mild or no symptoms, and will not have their diagnoses confirmed by tests, according to the ProPublica report. Slightly more than a fifth of all cases will require Slightly more than a fifth of all cases will require hospitalization. (That's roughly the average number of patients requiring hospitalization for COVID-19 in other countries.)

The number of hospital beds nationwide would need to double over that 12-month period, either by freeing up existing beds or adding new ones.

From ProPublica:

As of 2018, Tucson had 2,680 total hospital beds, of which about 56 percent were occupied, potentially leaving only 1,180 beds open for additional patients. The bed count includes 340 beds in intensive care units, according to data from the American Hospital Association and the American Hospital Directory. Intensive care units are best equipped to handle the most acute coronavirus cases.

The Tucson region has a population of about 1.2 million residents; 19 percent are over the age of 65. The experience in other countries has shown that elderly patients have significantly higher hospitalization and fatality rates from the coronavirus.

How Prepared Are Phoenix Hospitals For Coronavirus?

In the moderate scenario, in which 40 percent of the adult population contracts the disease over 12 months, Tucson would be among the regions that would need to expand capacity.

It is estimated that about 9 percent of the adult population would require hospital care. In a moderate scenario where 40 percent of the population is infected over a 12-month period, hospitals in Tucson would receive an estimated 82,600 coronavirus patients. The influx of patients would require 2,750 beds over 12 months, which is 2.3 times times the number of available beds in that time period. The Harvard researchers' scenarios assume that each coronavirus patient will require 12 days of hospital care on average, based on data from China.

In the Tucson region, intensive care units would be especially overwhelmed and require additional capacity. Without coronavirus patients, there are only 160 available beds on average in intensive care units, which is 3.8 times times less than what is needed to care for all severe cases.

How Prepared Are Tucson Hospitals?

This is how many hospital beds will be needed in the Tucson area if infections are spread out over six months, 12 months or 18 months:

For the analysis, Jha and his team selected various rates of infection and modeled hospital capacity for each over three time periods, six months, 12 months and 18 months. The infection rate scenarios are based on estimates from leading epidemiologist Dr. Marc Lipsitch, head of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, who made the projections of how many people globally would be infected. (Read more about the methodology here.)

By modeling the data over the three time periods, the scenarios illustrate how much the nation could “flatten the curve” with social measures to ensure hospitals have greater capacity to care for coronavirus patients.

“The way to permanently stop new cases from setting off long chains of transmission is to have each case infect considerably less than one case on average,” Lipsitch said. “The numbers will go down. There will still be little outbreaks, but not big ones.”

ProPublica, a Patch Partner, is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power and other public concerns. Click here to see ProPublica’s full story and specifics about hospitals in your area.