COVID-19: Projecting the impact in Rohingya refugee camps and beyond

Shaun A Truelove; Orit Abrahim; Chiara Altare; Andrew Azman; Paul B Spiegel

While we were unable to find an accurate recent estimate of the human resources currently available in the camps (e.g., number of doctors, nurses, midwives), it is very likely that they will be inadequate to face a large influx of patients.Given the limited availability of skilled health workers and hospital beds in Cox's Bazar, it is unlikely that additional health care professionals within Bangladesh would be available. A surge of international health care workers could be considered, but this will be difficult given the high demands worldwide during the pandemic and existing travel restrictions. Furthermore, issues of introduction of the virus from expatriates into Bangladesh would need to be carefully addressed. A more likely strategy will be task shifting among existing health care workers, with physicians treating the most severe cases, nurses the less severe cases, and community health workers addressing mild infections. Such task shifting would require intensive training that needs to begin immediately. An examination of the "re-purposing" of people working in various capacities (e.g., teachers as schools are closed) needs to be undertaken to assess how they can be used to address this epidemic while ensuring integration and . CC-BY-NC-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.