COVID-19: Tracking the Pandemic with A Simple Curve Approximation Tool (SCAT)

Jane Courtney

Since the purpose of SCAT is to draw the curve, a crude attempt is made here to approximate healthcare system capacity and draw a capacity line on the curve. In Italy, approximately 10% of infected patients were admitted to intensive care units daily during early to mid-March. 23 Before the construction of COVID-19 hospitals, the capacity of Italy's available critical care was around 5,200 beds. Using these approximations suggests that Italy's capacity for COVID-19 cases would have been 52,000. This intersects SCAT's curve on Day 82 (22 March 2020). As mentioned previously, case rates can become unreliable as testing and reporting becomes erratic in a crisis. Instead, looking at death rates can be useful as they can be extrapolated backwards. By 26 March 2020 (Day 86), Italy had reached a case fatality rate of 10%. This may suggest that there is a correlation between critical care bed occupancy and case fatality rate, as the typical survival time of non-survivors is 1-2 weeks. This also intersects SCAT's curve on Day 82 (22 March 2020) , showing a strong similarity to the previously approximated capacity. Figure 11 shows these lines on the case graphs.