A computational investigation of COVID-19 transmission inside hospital wards and associated costs.

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed a particular burden on hospitals: from intra-hospital transmission of the infections to reduced admissions of non-COVID-19 patients. There are also high costs associated with the treatment of hospitalised COVID-19 patients, as well as reductions in revenues due to delayed and cancelled treatments. In this study we investigate computationally the transmission of COVID-19 inside a hospital ward that contains multiple-bed bays (with 4 or 6 beds) and multiple single-bed side rooms (that can accommodate the contacts of COVID-19-positive patients). The aim of this study is to investigate the role of 4-bed bays vs. 6-bed bays on the spread of infections and the hospital costs. We show that 4-bed bays are associated with lower infections only when we reduce the discharge time of some patients from 10 days to 5 days. This also leads to lower costs for the treatment of COVID-19 patients. In contrast, 6-bed bays are associated with reduced hospital waiting lists (especially when there are also multiple side rooms available to accommodate the contacts of COVID-19-positive patients identified inside the 6-bed bays).

Contagious margin calls: How COVID-19 threatened global stock market liquidity

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic caused some of the largest — and fastest — market dislocations in modern history. During the outbreak, liquidity quickly evaporated in a coordinated fashion across global markets. We show that a sudden increase in margin requirements during the pandemic is correlated with the withdrawal of global liquidity providers. These effects are concentrated in securities most exposed to high-frequency market makers, consistent with the binding nature of increased capital constraints.