Flattening the curve before it flattens us: hospital critical care capacity limits and mortality from novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV2) cases in US counties

Charles C Branas; Andrew Rundle; Sen Pei; Wan Yang; Brendan G Carr; Sarah Sims; Alexis Zebrowski; Ronan Doorley; Neil Schluger; James W Quinn; Jeffrey Shaman

All US counties were further aggregated into US regions and urban/non-urban classifications. US regions were defined using Census Bureau standards as Northeast, Midwest, South, and West. 14 Counties were defined as urban or non-urban using the 2013 US Department of Agriculture rural-urban continuum classification (RUCC) scheme. Urban counties had RUCC codes 1-3 in this scheme and listed as metropolitan; non-urban counties had RUCC codes 4-9 and listed as non-metropolitan. This ordinal RUCC variable distinguishes counties by . 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.