Design of COVID-19 staged alert systems to ensure healthcare capacity with minimal closures.
Nat Commun
; 12(1): 3767, 2021 06 18.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1275921
Preprint
This scientific journal article is probably based on a previously available preprint. It has been identified through a machine matching algorithm, human confirmation is still pending.
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This scientific journal article is probably based on a previously available preprint. It has been identified through a machine matching algorithm, human confirmation is still pending.
See preprint
ABSTRACT
Community mitigation strategies to combat COVID-19, ranging from healthy hygiene to shelter-in-place orders, exact substantial socioeconomic costs. Judicious implementation and relaxation of restrictions amplify their public health benefits while reducing costs. We derive optimal strategies for toggling between mitigation stages using daily COVID-19 hospital admissions. With public compliance, the policy triggers ensure adequate intensive care unit capacity with high probability while minimizing the duration of strict mitigation measures. In comparison, we show that other sensible COVID-19 staging policies, including France's ICU-based thresholds and a widely adopted indicator for reopening schools and businesses, require overly restrictive measures or trigger strict stages too late to avert catastrophic surges. As proof-of-concept, we describe the optimization and maintenance of the staged alert system that has guided COVID-19 policy in a large US city (Austin, Texas) since May 2020. As cities worldwide face future pandemic waves, our findings provide a robust strategy for tracking COVID-19 hospital admissions as an early indicator of hospital surges and enacting staged measures to ensure integrity of the health system, safety of the health workforce, and public confidence.
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
COVID-19
/
Hospitalization
Type of study:
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
North America
Language:
English
Journal:
Nat Commun
Journal subject:
Biology
/
Science
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
S41467-021-23989-x
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