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As local health care officials warn of dire consequences if the coronavirus starts spreading unchecked, a new Harvard Global Health Institute model of how the virus could impact hospitals shows that Pensacola's current health care system capacity would be overwhelmed by a crush of patients in all but the absolute best-case scenario.

The model released earlier this week by the Harvard Global Health Institute analyzes data for how the coronavirus spreads, along with hospitalization rates, and predicts how the virus will impact regional health care systems across the entire country.

Unlike the flu, which has a hospitalization rate of about 1% based on figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, COVID-19 requires about more than 20% of all cases to be treated in the hospital, meaning a large-scale outbreak in a community dramatically increases the burden on local hospitals.

In all but one of the nine possible scenarios modeled by Harvard researchers, Pensacola's hospitals will not have enough capacity to handle coronavirus patients without finding a way to increase available hospital beds.

Even in the best-case scenario for Pensacola, there will still be a need to increase the number of intensive care unit beds to handle the most critical cases.

Pensacola area hospitals are making changes to their operations in response to the virus by limiting visitors, and Ascension Sacred Heart Pensacola spokesman Mike Burke told the News Journal on Thursday evening that the hospital was postponing non-urgent and elective surgeries to protect against the virus.

The new Harvard model adds more urgency to local hospital executives' and public health care officials' pleas to local governments to take further action to increase social distancing measures to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Pensacola Mayor Grover Robinson issued an order Thursday closing restaurant dining rooms and other entertainment venues, one of many steps being done to increase the social distancing that public health officials say is key to limiting the spread of the virus and its the impact on the health care system.

At the press conference announcing Robinson's order, Baptist Health Care President and CEO Mark Faulkner recognized that these measures are having a negative impact on the economy, but he stressed they are needed.

"If we don't do these tough decisions, we're headed for a humanitarian impact," Faulkner said.

Earlier on Thursday, the warning delivered by Dr. Karen Chapman, director of the Florida Department of Health in Okaloosa County, to the Okaloosa County Commission was even more dire for what was facing the health care system if capacity is overwhelmed: people will die.

"We're looking at a meltdown, a catastrophe," Chapman said.

Modeling the impact

Researchers at the Harvard Global Health Institute and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health created a model to give hospitals across the country a timeline of when they will likely hit capacity during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Our model gives hospital leaders and policy makers a clear sense of when they will hit capacity and strategic information on how to prepare for rising numbers of patients," Ashish K. Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told ProPublica, a nonprofit news outlet that partnered with the institute in publishing the model. "If people wonder 'Why am I social distancing?' and 'Why am I isolating myself?' This data makes that real. People should look at this data and make sure their community has a plan."

Researchers estimated the best-case scenario is that 20% of the population will be infected with the coronavirus based on what is known about infection rates.

If the coronavirus only infects 20% of the Pensacola region's population — the lowest amount contemplated by researchers — 127,371 people in the Pensacola region would become infected and 26,680 of them would need hospitalization. Of the people needing to go into the hospital, 5,776 of them would need a bed in an intensive care unit.

If the 20% number is reached in Pensacola in 18 months, area hospitals will only reach about 77% capacity. However, there will still be a need for more ICU beds, as the model estimates ICU beds needed with normal day-to-day patients and COVID-19 patients will be at 138% of what is available.

In the eight other scenarios modeled by the researchers, Pensacola hospitals will be overwhelmed with patients.

In the "moderate" scenario, researchers estimate 40% of the population will contract COVID-19. That would mean that 254,742 people become infected, with 53,360 of them needing to be hospitalized and 11,552 people needing treatment in the ICU.

In that scenario over a 12-month period, Pensacola hospitals would be faced with increasing their capacity by 2.4 times the amount of currently available beds.

The model was put together with data on available hospital beds and average occupancy rates in all of the country's hospital referral regions, which are geographic areas within which people generally go to the same hospitals based on Medicare records.

The Pensacola Hospital Referral Region includes Escambia, Santa Rosa, Okaloosa and Walton counties in Florida and Escambia, parts of eastern Baldwin, western Covington and southern Conecuh counties in Alabama.

The region has about 2,000 hospital beds, the majority in Pensacola, and the region has a population of 812,000 residents.

Based 2018 records, researchers found that on average 62% of Pensacola area hospital beds are occupied, leaving about 760 beds open for potential COVID-19 patients.

Surge capacity

Dr. Wesley Farr, a University of West Florida professor who specializes in infectious diseases at the school's Department of Public Health, said the model shows why slowing the rate of infection to "flatten the curve" is so important.

"If we flatten the curve enough to get the 18 months even with 40% infected, we just exceed the (hospital) capacity by 20%," Farr said.

Farr said hospitals have what is known as "surge capacity" or the ability to quickly add hospital beds and the ability to care for more patients.

West Florida Hospital CEO Gay Nord told reporters Thursday at the city's press conference that Pensacola's major hospitals are working together to increase capacity, but couldn't give an exact number other than to say it was "substantial."

"We all have a very comprehensive emergency management plans," Nord said. "In fact, we're meeting after this just to talk through the plan between the health care systems that we all have surge capacity. We know exactly what that would look like."

Increasing capacity will not only involve adding more beds, but more staff, supplies and equipment, which all other hospitals across the country are also scrambling to add.

In Okaloosa County on Thursday, Chapman said the lack of resources for hospitals was why implementing strict social distancing measures was crucial to saving lives.

"We can't buy our way out of this because we can't even find the staffing, the hospital beds, the ventilators," Chapman said. "Our only hope is to keep the burden of disease down."

Jim Little can be reached at jwlittle@pnj.com and 850-208-9827.