Real Public Health Doctors Study Logistics.

[frodo]

I am a simple engineer and I am trying to get my head around Pandemic H1N1 numbers.

The first I am hearing is that about 10% of confirmed cases need hospitalisation. Let's say that for every confirmed case, there are Ten unconfirmed cases.

That means 1% of those infected will require hospitalisation. Why hospitalisation? Because they either have such a bad case, or complications so as to make the disease life threatening.

So assume that this thing keeps plugging away until at the peak of the wave we have 30% of the population infected.

In Australia that means around Six million people. That means around 60,000 hospital admissions with life threatening flu.

There aren't that many hospital beds, nor ventilators. What am i missing?

[CanadaSue]

A couple of things... maybe.

Not everyone will be sick at once -it will be spread out over several months so the daily requirement for beds/ventilators will be somewhat less.

Your 30% - is that TOTAL infected? Or a peak of 30% sick at once? I'm having trouble imagining the latter. And if it's 30% over a few months - it's a bit more bearable.

Nevertheless, if it continues to require 1% or thereabouts, of patients to spend at least an overnight in hospital - we've got problems.

[sandyd]

Most are not needing vents, are they?

If not, then IV antivirals and other care CAN be moved to home health or subacute care facilities.

[CanadaSue]

Are thos figures for the US? I just checked Canada's update for today - will post it in a bit & we've got a 0.3% hospitalization rate. We can cope with that if it stays that low.