Potential Covid-19 Impact to Area Hospitals

I read this last night and wanted to share it. ProPublica published the model analysis of Dr.

Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, who led a team of researchers that developed the analysis.

You can go to this link to see how it plays out for any area. The page will default to an area based on your IP/location info, but on putting in "Plainfield, IL" the default analysis was for Joliet, IL area. Here's the upshot from this analysis, and it very clearly illustrates why we need to practice stringent social distancing AND why it's so important to properly fund and administer organizations like CDC and the pieces of government that hit the ground running during pandemics.

From the article, specific to the Joliet area:

To be sure, models are based on the best available information and can change over the course of time. And Jha’s model doesn’t take into account the ability of hospitals or states to add additional beds.

Here’s what the situation looks like in Joliet, IL, the region you’ve selected.

As of 2018, Joliet, IL had 1,380 total hospital beds, of which about 52% were occupied, potentially leaving only 660 beds open for additional patients. The bed count includes 150 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 Joliet, IL region has a population of about 691,000 residents; 13% 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.

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

It is estimated that about 8% of the adult population would require hospital care. In a moderate scenario where 40% of the population is infected over a 12-month period, hospitals in Joliet, IL would receive an estimated 42,700 coronavirus patients. The influx of patients would require 1,420 beds over 12 months, which is 2.2 times the 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 Joliet, IL region, intensive care units would be especially overwhelmed and require additional capacity. Without coronavirus patients, there are only 53 available beds on average in intensive care units, which is 5.7 times less than what is needed to care for all severe cases.

Scary? Yes, but scary or not, knowledge is power. Stay safe and well.