Estimated number of N95 respirators needed for healthcare workers in acute-care hospitals during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol
; 42(11): 1318-1326, 2021 11.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1575888
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE:
Due to shortages of N95 respirators during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, it is necessary to estimate the number of N95s required for healthcare workers (HCWs) to inform manufacturing targets and resource allocation.METHODS:
We developed a model to determine the number of N95 respirators needed for HCWs both in a single acute-care hospital and the United States.RESULTS:
For an acute-care hospital with 400 all-cause monthly admissions, the number of N95 respirators needed to manage COVID-19 patients admitted during a month ranges from 113 (95% interpercentile range [IPR], 50-229) if 0.5% of admissions are COVID-19 patients to 22,101 (95% IPR, 5,904-25,881) if 100% of admissions are COVID-19 patients (assuming single use per respirator, and 10 encounters between HCWs and each COVID-19 patient per day). The number of N95s needed decreases to a range of 22 (95% IPR, 10-43) to 4,445 (95% IPR, 1,975-8,684) if each N95 is used for 5 patient encounters. Varying monthly all-cause admissions to 2,000 requires 6,645-13,404 respirators with a 60% COVID-19 admission prevalence, 10 HCW-patient encounters, and reusing N95s 5-10 times. Nationally, the number of N95 respirators needed over the course of the pandemic ranges from 86 million (95% IPR, 37.1-200.6 million) to 1.6 billion (95% IPR, 0.7-3.6 billion) as 5%-90% of the population is exposed (single-use). This number ranges from 17.4 million (95% IPR, 7.3-41 million) to 312.3 million (95% IPR, 131.5-737.3 million) using each respirator for 5 encounters.CONCLUSIONS:
We quantified the number of N95 respirators needed for a given acute-care hospital and nationally during the COVID-19 pandemic under varying conditions.
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Pandemics
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
North America
Language:
English
Journal:
Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol
Journal subject:
Communicable Diseases
/
Nursing
/
Epidemiology
/
Hospitals
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
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