BACKGROUND: Severe acute respiratory syndrome Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2) has been declared a worldwide emergency and a pandemic disease by the World Health Organisation (WHO). It started in China in December 2019, and it rapidly spread throughout Italy, which has been the most affected country after China. The pandemia touched all countries with similarly negative effects on population, countries and healthcare structures. OBJECTIVE: Evolution of the Covid-19 infection as well as the way such a phenomena can be characterized in terms of resources and planning, has to be considered. One of the most critical resource items has been the less of Intensive Care Units (ICUs) places with respect to the infection trend and critical hospitalization. METHODS: We propose a model to estimate the needed number of places in ICUs during the most acute phase of the infection. We also define a scalable geographic model to plan emergency and future Covid-19 patients management by planning their reallocation in health structures of other region. RESULTS: We apply and assess the prediction method both at national and regional scale. ICU beds prediction has been tested with respect to real data provided by the Italian gouvernement. We show that our model is able to predict with a reliable error in terms of complexity of resources related to estimation parameters used for healthcare structures. Also, the proposed method is scalable at geographic level. This is relevant for pandemic phenomena as Covid-19 that have shown their different incidence even among northern and southern Italian regions. CONCLUSIONS: The contribution can be useful for decision-makers to plan resources to guarantee patients management, but it can be considered a reference model for the potential upcoming and feared virus increasing phase as well as for similar coronavirus diffusion.
Regional Resources Assessment during Covid-19 Emergency: the Italian case