Is a COVID19 Quarantine Justified in Chile or USA Right Now?

Rafael Gonzalez Gonzalez; Francisco Munoz; Pablo S Moya; Miguel Kiwi

In an epidemic scenario, rather than the contagion percentage of the total population, one of the most critical elements is the strength of the healthcare system. In * Center for the Development of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology †[e-mail] and [e-mail] the COVID-19 pandemic, the bottleneck of the healthcare system is given by the number of beds available for intensive care (ICU). The number of ICU beds in Chile is not entirely certain, but it could be estimated to 1000 beds [1] (or ∼ 5.3 ICU per 100.000 inhabitants). Of those, we can expect a steady-state occupancy of 75%; this is the average of the usual hospital beds occupied in the OECD [2] . Due to the exponential growth of the infection, a lower value (i.e., a 50% or a 30% occupancy) does not make much difference. Therefore, for this study, we are going to consider the currently available capacity of the Chilean healthcare system for COVID-19 patients is ∼ 250 ICU beds. As we will show later, a higher number of ICU beds can be assumed, for example, similar to the case of Belgium, but the scenario is still quite worrying.