Effect of improved health care system capacity.

Abstract

<p>Starting with a baseline case ascertainment of 80% and a small health care system (0.1% of population are HCWs, 1:15 and 1:50 ratio of bed and contact-tracing capacities to HCWs, as above), this figure shows the effect of doubling both the health care capacity and the health care workforce at different times after the first detected case. This increase in capacity represents the transition from a small health care system to a medium health care system, as defined in <a href="http://www.plosntds.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pntd.0005018#pntd.0005018.g005" target="_blank">Fig 5</a>. This clearly shows the importance of early detection; the time delay in delivering the additional capacity is less important over this timescale of 0–8 weeks, because the existing health care system is capable of accommodating patients in the early stage of the outbreak.</p