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

COVID-19 is spreading globally because of a lack of prior immunity combined with relatively high infectiousness. 5 6 7 Age-adjusted hospitalization rates range between 1% and 70% of reported cases in the United States 8 and between 0.04% to 18.4% in China. 9 This means that even with a substantial proportion of asymptomatic cases, the total number of people requiring hospitalization will exceed the total number of beds available in many countries. 10 The ability to provide care thus depends on the tempo of pandemic spread. Based on the experiences from China, Italy and Spain, the critically limiting resource in reducing COVID-19 related mortality is the capacity of intensive care with mechanical ventilation -since many COVID-19 pneumonia patients die from severe respiratory diseases including acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). 11 12 Overall mortality for the outbreak in China was estimated to be 1.4% of the confirmed cases (0.7% including unconfirmed cases), 9 yet figures up to 5.7% were reported for the Hubei province, which has been hit hardest. 13 . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.