Mathematical modeling of COVID-19 containment strategies with considerations for limited medical resources

Brydon Eastman; Cameron Meaney; Michelle Przedborski; Mohammad Kohandel

Another important consideration when devising a social distancing strategy is to carefully select an appropriate time to end social distancing. Obviously, various factors influence such a decision as many people face significant economic, social, and personal hurdles as social distancing is prolonged. The risk of ending social distancing too early is that the pandemic may reach a second peak, again overwhelming the healthcare system and leading to unnecessary deaths. A relevant problem therefore, is to determine the earliest time such that social distancing can be responsibly ended. One way to assess control of the virus is to limit the maximum number of concurrent infections to within the capacity of what the healthcare system can handle. A key limited medical resources in treatment of COVID-19 is mechanical ventilators and unfortunately, Canada, as well as most countries, are unlikely to have enough ventilators in order to meet the demand that the pandemic peak will necessitate. Currently, Ontario and Quebec have an estimated 1810 and 2970 ventilators, respectively [9] . In China, an estimated 20% of COVID-19 patients were hospitalized with 6.1% experiencing severe respiratory failure [10] . This can be used in the SEIRD model for the approximate proportion of COVID-19 patients who require the use of a mechanical ventilator, yielding an estimate of the anticipated ventilator demand at the peak of the pandemic by scaling the predicted infection curve.