Intervention strategies against COVID-19 and their estimated impact on Swedish healthcare capacity

Jasmine M Gardner; Lander Willem; Wouter van der Wijngaart; Shina Caroline Lynn Kamerlin; Nele Brusselaers; Peter Kasson

The copyright holder for this preprint . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.11.20062133 doi: medRxiv preprint through contact with colleagues is presumed to be similar to other workplaces, and, while using appropriate PPE, transmission should be small. Under this gross approximation, we predict substantial numbers of healthcare workers to become infected under the current public-health policies. In particular, 90% of healthcare workers could become infected with 1.5% of total healthcare workers in need of hospitalisation at the peak and 15.8% unable to work due to severe infection, which could affect the healthcare capacity. Note that these estimates are based on the availability of rigorous PPE for healthcare workers; obviously without proper PPE these numbers will be higher. Under mandated social distancing measures, fewer healthcare workers would be infected and thus excluded from the workforce. This is plotted in Figure 5 .