FRIDAY, April 3, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Modeling suggests that in Italy, the number of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) intensive care unit (ICU) patients will continue increasing into April, according to a report published April 1 by the European Society of Anaesthesiology.
Davide Manca, Ph.D., from the Process Systems Engineering Laboratory at the Politecnico di Milano, describes the number of ICU COVID-19 patients (NICUC) and number of deaths in hospitals (NDC) in Lombardy and Italy to help prepare for emergency planning of ICU and sub-ICU wards.
Manca notes that since day 1 (Feb. 22, 2020), the NICUC has kept increasing in Lombardy and Italy. The NICUC phenomenon started with an exponential trend, which continued with relaxing upward concavity until days 16 to 18. Following this, an inflection point was reached (days 22 and 25 in Lombardy and Italy, respectively). The steady increase continues thereafter, but the velocity of the increase slows. Ninety-eight percent of this plateau is expected to be reached on days 45 and 47 in Lombardy and Italy (April 6 and 8, respectively), after which, NICUC should begin to fall. The maximum daily increase of NDC is identified on days 36 to 40 in Lombardy and days 36 to 41 in Italy. Models predict that 98 percent of the plateau condition will occur at around day 54 (April 15) in both Lombardy and Italy. In a more pessimistic model, the days with no more in-hospital deaths are day 103 and day 104 (June 3 and 4) for Lombardy and Italy, respectively.
"The difference between Lombardy and Italy is due to the social-distancing measures adopted first in Lombardy and then all over the country," Manca writes. "Every day counted."
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