Open AccessA computational investigation of COVID-19 transmission inside hospital wards and associated costs
Author(s) -
David MorenoMartos,
Sean Foley,
Benjamin J. Parcell,
Dumitru Trucu,
Raluca Eftimie
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
mathematical biosciences and engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.451
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1551-0018
pISSN - 1547-1063
DOI - 10.3934/mbe.2022306
Subject(s) - covid-19 , transmission (telecommunications) , medicine , pandemic , emergency medicine , hospital bed , medical emergency , pediatrics , virology , outbreak , disease , infectious disease (medical specialty) , computer science , nursing , telecommunications
The COVID-19 pandemic has placed a particular burden on hospitals: from intra-hospital transmission of the infections to reduced admissions of non-COVID-19 patients. There are also high costs associated with the treatment of hospitalised COVID-19 patients, as well as reductions in revenues due to delayed and cancelled treatments. In this study we investigate computationally the transmission of COVID-19 inside a hospital ward that contains multiple-bed bays (with 4 or 6 beds) and multiple single-bed side rooms (that can accommodate the contacts of COVID-19-positive patients). The aim of this study is to investigate the role of 4-bed bays vs. 6-bed bays on the spread of infections and the hospital costs. We show that 4-bed bays are associated with lower infections only when we reduce the discharge time of some patients from 10 days to 5 days. This also leads to lower costs for the treatment of COVID-19 patients. In contrast, 6-bed bays are associated with reduced hospital waiting lists (especially when there are also multiple side rooms available to accommodate the contacts of COVID-19-positive patients identified inside the 6-bed bays).