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1000
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Abstract/Summary
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Ever since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the new coronavirus disease 2019
(COVID-19) as a pandemic, there has been a public health debate concerning medical
resources and supplies including hospital beds, intensive care units (ICU), ventilators and protective personal equipment (PPE). Forecasting COVID-19 dissemination has played a key role
in informing healthcare professionals and governments on how to manage overburdened
healthcare systems. However, forecasting during the pandemic remained challenging and
sometimes highly controversial. Here, we highlight this challenge by performing a comparative evaluation for the estimations obtained from three COVID-19 surge calculators under different social distancing approaches, taking Lebanon as a case study. Despite discrepancies in
estimations, the three surge calculators used herein agree that there will be a relative shortage
in the capacity of medical resources and a significant surge in PPE demand if the social distancing policy is removed. Our results underscore the importance of implementing containment interventions including social distancing in alleviating the demand for medical care
during the COVID-19 pandemic in the absence of any medication or vaccine. The paper
also highlights the value of employing several models in surge planning.
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