Demand for hospitalization services for COVID-19 patients in Brazil

Marcia C Castro; Lucas Resende de Carvalho; Taylor Chin; Rebecca Kahn; Giovanny V. A. Franca; Eduardo Marques Macario; Wanderson Kleber de Oliveira

show that hospital services could start to experience shortages of hospital beds, ICU beds, and 27 ventilators in early April, the most critical situation observed for ICU beds. Increasing the 28 allocation of beds for COVID-19 (in lieu of other conditions) or temporarily placing all resources 29 under the administration of the state delays the anticipated start of shortages by a week. This 30 suggests that solutions adopted by the Brazilian government must aim at expanding the available 31 capacity (e.g., makeshift hospitals), and not simply prioritizing the allocation of available 32 We conducted forward simulations of the demand for hospital beds, ICU beds, and mechanical 77 ventilators by health macro-region in Brazil. In the initial phase of a new infectious disease 78 outbreak, the number of cases grows exponentially. 12,13 Using the number of cases reported to 79 All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission. author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.