NC Coronavirus: New Report Predicts Impact On State Hospitals

NORTH CAROLINA — Without an extension of social distancing policies set to expire at the end of the month, North Carolina hospitals face an increased likelihood that their ability to provide acute care needed for coronavirus patients will be outstripped, perhaps as soon as Memorial Day, a team of epidemiologists told state health officials Monday.

Gov. Roy Cooper ordered all of the state to "stay at home" beginning March 30. The mandatory order is valid for 30 days and set to expire April 29; however, it could be revised or extended.

"It is what we have to do to save lives," Cooper said.

As of 11 a.m. Monday, there were 2,870 cases of COVID-19 in North Carolina, according to state health officials. The coronavirus is now documented in 89 out of 100 counties throughout the state and has been blamed for at least 33 deaths and 270 hospitalizations.

SEE ALSO: Coronavirus: Entire State Of NC Ordered To 'Stay At Home’

The group of scientists from Duke University and University of North Carolina developed a "weather forecasting" modeling approach to create composite predictions to estimate hospital bed shortages amid the current outbreak of the new coronavirus, which causes the COVID-19 disease.

Access to hospital beds will chart the ultimate death toll in the state, the scientists said.

According to their findings, North Carolina is on course to see a substantial increase in confirmed COVID-19 cases, up from the current case count of almost 3,000 to as many as 6,500 by April 15.

By June 1, there could be as many as 750,000 cases. That's if the current stay-at-home policy is allowed to expire at the end of April and social distancing is lifted in North Carolina, the panel of scientists said in a report released by state public health officials Monday. If that scenario were to occur, state hospitals will begin to feel the stress by Memorial Day.

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Keeping a social distancing policy in place, however, will lessen the impact on hospitals, to an infection rate of an estimated 250,000 cases by June 1, they said.

"If, past April 2020, the state maintains some forms of social distancing with similar transmission reduction effectiveness, the peak stress on available acute care capacity in our current estimates (which run through June 1) will likely occur in mid-to-late May," when there's a 25 percent chance the state's acute care bed capacity will be insufficient for demand, the report said.

If, however, state officials lift all social distancing policy, that chance increases dramatically, to a one in two chance that state hospitals will not be able to meet COVID-19 demand.

"What we know works to flatten the curve is social distancing," Kimberly Powers, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said Monday. Policy is one piece of the solution, but getting the buy-in from the community is a very important component, she added.

The scientists say their findings are much like a "spaghetti model" for an approaching hurricane.

"Like a weather forecast, these composite predictions do not forecast an absolute outcome … rather, synthesizing the results from three independent models, these predictions characterize the likelihood that certain outcomes will occur," the report said.

Read the Hospital Capacity and the COVID-19 Epidemic In North Carolina: Preliminary Estimates brief here.

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