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Rapidly increasing ITU capacity is tricky - the main issue is having enough ITU-trained nursing staff to properly look after someone on a ventilator as it’s a highly specialised job. It’s complicated by the fact that COVID is aerosol generating and you therefore can’t use less invasive (and therefore less resource intensive) forms of ventilation such as BIPAP which would otherwise work well in a lot of the covid cases.
Physical capacity isn’t so hard - there are plans to incrementally cancel non-urgent surgery and use the operating theatres and anaesthetic machines in them as demand requires.
There’s a good article here from an ITU consultant talking through what’s going on behind the scenes, and why it’s such a challenge - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/03/icu-doctor-nhs-coronavirus-pandemic-hospitals
kimchi-
Thank you for the link - I hadn't seen that article. This quote struck me:
In Wuhan, ICU capacity was increased by over 1,000 beds in two weeks by building a new hospital, but this is not possible in the UK.
Why not? Also struck by the fact the US has 10 times more ICU beds per capita than the UK.
I guess given the lead times (trained staff, specialised equipment etc) it is not possible to solve the problem by chucking money at it?
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The trigger for the quarantines in Hubei and Northern Italy appears to essentially have been the same - i.e. the local health care system being heavily stressed by rapid increase in severe cases.
The fundamental government challenge with covid 19 is surely to figure out how to rapidly increase ICU capacity. I hope this is the focus of government planning in this country.
I'm curious to know what the options are. Is it feasible to start designating certain hospitals only for treatment of covid?