COVID-19: Forecasting short term hospital needs in France
Pascal Crépey
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Abstract
Europe is now considered as the epicenter of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, France being among the most impacted country. In France, there is an increasing concern regarding the capacity of the healthcare system to sustain the outbreak, especially regarding intensive care units (ICU). The aim of this study was to estimate the dynamics of the epidemic in France, and to assess its impact on healthcare resources for each French metropolitan Region. We developed a deterministic, age-structured, Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Removed (SEIR) model based on catchment areas of each COVID-19 referral hospitals. We performed one month ahead predictions (up to April 14, 2020) for three different scenarios (R0=1.5, R0=2.25, R0=3), where we estimated the daily number of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths, the needs in ICU beds per Region and the reaching date of ICU capacity limits. At the national level, the total number of infected cases is expected to range from 22,872 in the best case (R0...
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