Background: Having a minimum number of workers in medical services is widely regarded as a key component of disease prevention. However, with the delay in confirming cases of SARS-CoV-2, the understaffed medical providers informed late and the virus has rapidly spread nationally. Methods This study, based on the Dempster-Shafer theory method and Evidential Reasoning, assesses the risks posed by understaffing for the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. Results The findings examine six (6) factor risks and show that the understaffing risk in 2019 was 0.14% in magnitude in Wuhan, compared to 0.27% in Shenzhen. When ranking understaffing risks from low to high, the findings show that they increased from 3.979 to 3.983% and from 3.998 to 4.002% in Wuhan and Shenzhen, respectively. Conclusions We first conclude that from the SARS-CoV-1 to the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, understaffing risk equally increased at 0.004% in both cities. However, Shenzhen city is at a higher risk than Wuhan city. Second, Shenzhen understaffing delayed SARS-CoV-2 outbreak prevention 0.13% more than Wuhan city. We generally conclude that Shenzhen city could be doubly worse off than Wuhan city if it was the epicenter of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. Therefore, public health care training and employment policy must be optimized to complete the lack not only in both cities but also in other cities to prevent future outbreaks.
The Impact of Understaffing on Delaying Early-Stage SARS-CoV-2 Outbreak Detection