Challenge of forecasting demand of medical resources and supplies during a pandemic: A comparative evaluation of three surge calculators for COVID-19
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Abstract
Ever since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the new coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a pandemic, there has been a public health debate concerning medical resources and supplies including hospital beds, intensive care units (ICU), ventilators and protective personal equipment (PPE). Forecasting COVID-19 dissemination has played a key role in informing healthcare professionals and governments on how to manage overburdened healthcare systems. However, forecasting during the pandemic remained challenging and sometimes highly controversial. Here, we highlight this challenge by performing a comparative evaluation for the estimations obtained from three COVID-19 surge calculators under different social distancing approaches, taking Lebanon as a case study. Despite discrepancies in estimations, the three surge calculators used herein agree that there will be a relative shortage in the capacity of medical resources and a significant surge in PPE demand if the social distancing policy is removed. Our results underscore the importance of implementing containment interventions including social distancing in alleviating the demand for medical care during the COVID-19 pandemic in the absence of any medication or vaccine. The paper also highlights the value of employing several models in surge planning.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.09.29.20204172: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Particularly, this is critical for low- and middle-income countries, as they often unevenly bear the infectious diseases burden and are hindered by limitations in resources available to tackle them 29, often relying heavily on …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.09.29.20204172: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Particularly, this is critical for low- and middle-income countries, as they often unevenly bear the infectious diseases burden and are hindered by limitations in resources available to tackle them 29, often relying heavily on an increasingly restricted foreign supply-chain. Despite the efficacy of forecasting in the better planning ahead and reducing the impact of the infectious disease outbreaks including healthcare capacity, deaths, and the economic burden experienced, comparing forecasts at the national level remains challenging 17,29,30. The latter can potentially limit the development and use of forecasting 17. In this study, we highlight this challenge by comparing the projected incremental demands of medical resources and supplies by three surge calculators (CHIME, WHO COVID-19 ESFT, and COVID-19 AUBMC) for a single 200-day COVID-19 wave taking Lebanon as our case study; assuming different social distancing policy scenarios. Our results indicate that there is a discrepancy in the forecasted data between the three surge calculators despite the use of identical input data. Yet, the three surge calculators used consistently show that relaxing social distancing policy and mitigation measures can dramatically overwhelm hospital capacity and lead to a dramatic surge in the daily PPE demands during the COVID-19 pandemic. These results are congruent with recommendations for implementing initiatives to “flatten the curve” and avoid healthcare systems from being overwhelmed thr...
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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