Without serious action, Australia may run out of intensive care beds by early April

By Megan Higgie and Andrew Kahn

Updated 19 March with predictions for Australia (which is now one day sooner) and adding a prediction for NSW.

Before reading further…

The model we present below is the worst-case scenario of exponential growth of COVID-19 cases continuing into April. The reason we wrote this article is because Australia has been tracking this worst-case scenario for the last two weeks, that is, experiencing exponential growth with the number of COVID-19 cases doubling every 3–4 days. We hope that the social distancing measures that have been introduced in Australia this week slow this increase, but only if people adhere to them and as well as the recommendations around hand and face hygiene. However, this is not yet visible in the data due to the lag time of 7–10 days between the actions we take to prevent the spread and the consequences of those actions appearing in the case numbers. As soon as the growth of cases is no longer exponential then this model below will not predict our future number of cases. We will be very clear to update this article as soon as this happens. Every day we hope to see the new data show a slowing of the spread and move away from exponential growth. Let’s all hope (and act to ensure) that happens very soon. However, until case accumulation stops being exponential, we are on track for the worse-case scenario outlined below.

1 | ICU beds are the difference between surviving and dying from COVID-19

Using data from > 70,000 cases in China, 5% of COVID-19 patients become ‘critical’ and require an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) bed with a ventilator in order to survive [note 1]. There are reports that patients require the ICU beds for approximately 4 weeks, while others out this at 7–10 days. The number of ICU beds is therefore critical in determining the number of people who unnecessarily die from COVID-19.

Below are the number of ICU beds, both in public and private hospitals, in Australia (by state) and NZ, from the last CORE Report of the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society (ANZICS) [note 2]: