The efficiency in the ordinary hospital bed management in Italy: an in-depth analysis of intensive care unit in the areas affected by COVID-19 before the outbreak

Fabrizio Pecoraro; Fabrizio Clemente; Daniela Luzi

Since the beginning of the infection through the identification of the first cases in the north of Italy, the number of patients infected closely follows an exponential trend, with a slightly change during the last week turning from an exponential to a linear trend. This tendency is appreciable not only considering the total number cases, but also the number of deaths, healed as well as the number of patients hospitalized in general and in the intensive care units dislocated all over the country. Trends describing the hospitalizations are reported in Figure 1 considering both the country as a whole and the region in particular, that still represents the region with the highest number of cases in Italy. These trends highlight the tremendous amount of work carried out by the healthcare professionals to host the exceptional number of patients to be hospitalized in the health structures. . CC-BY-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.