Zahid, Mondal H

English

VCU Scholars Compass

Masthead LogoVirginia Commonwealth UniversityVCU Scholars CompassBiology and Medicine Through MathematicsConference 2019May 15th, 6:30 PMEbola: Impact of hospital's admission policy in anoverwhelmed scenarioMondal H. ZahidUniversity of Texas at Arlington, mdmondal.zahid@mavs.uta.eduFollow this and additional works at: https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/bammPart of the Disease Modeling Commons, Epidemiology Commons, and the Physical Sciencesand Mathematics CommonsThis Event is brought to you for free and open access by the Dept. of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at VCU Scholars Compass. It has beenaccepted for inclusion in Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference by an authorized administrator of VCU Scholars Compass. Formore information, please contact libcompass@vcu.edu.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/bamm/2019/wed/32Ebola: Impact of hospital's admission policyin an overwhelmed scenarioMondal Hasan Zahid and Christopher M. KribsJanuary 31, 2019Infectious disease outbreaks sometimes overwhelm healthcare facilities. Arecent case occurred in West Africa in 2014 when an Ebola virus outbreak over-whelmed facilities in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. In such scenarios, howmany patients can hospitals admit to minimize disease burden? This studyconsiders what type of hospital admission policy during a hypothetical Ebolaoutbreak can better serve the community, if overcrowding degrades the hospitalsetting. Our result shows that which policy minimizes loss to the communitydepends on the initial estimation of the control reproduction number, R0. Whenthe outbreak grows extremely fast (R01) it is better (in terms of total diseaseburden) to stop admitting patients after reaching the carrying capacity becauseovercrowding in the hospital makes the hospital setting ineffective at containinginfection, but when the outbreak grows only a little faster than the system’sability to contain it (R0 & 1), it is better to admit patients beyond the car-rying capacity because limited overcrowding still reduces infection more in thecommunity. However, when R0 is no more than a little greater than 1 (for ourparameter values, 1.012), both policies result the same because the number ofpatients never exceeds the maximum capacity.1

Ebola: Impact of hospital\u27s admission policy in an overwhelmed scenario

https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1291&context=bamm

Ebola: Impact of hospital\u27s admission policy in an overwhelmed scenario

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

VCU Scholars Compass