3 ms·
There is one study I know of that found a "weak positive correlation" between number of ICU beds and mortality, no correlation between number of general beds an
by desine 5y ago
There is one study I know of that found a "weak positive correlation" between number of ICU beds and mortality, no correlation between number of general beds and mortality:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7685049/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7685049/
There was a lot of misinformation and confusing data at the start of the pandemic regarding hospital beds. Here in the US, hospitals tend to operate near capacity as SOP - a result of for profit healthcare seeking max profitability. Most hospitals here also started reserving a percentage of their beds, both ICU and general care, for covid patients. These reserved but sometimes unoccupied beds were not factored in when local hospitals reported being at capacity - so a local radio station might say "these local hospitals are at max capacity" without reporting that they still have 5% beds free specifically for covid patients. I suspect this may have caused some deaths by people not seeking care because they thought it wasn't available when it was, however I haven't seen anything to validate that hypothesis (and I doubt there will ever be any data).
One interesting sidenote is that the military hospitals that President Trump rolled out while he was still in charge had very little effect:
https://www.npr.org/2020/05/07/851712311/u-s-field-hospitals-stand-down-most-without-treating-any-covid-19-patients https://www.npr.org/2020/05/07/851712311/u-s-field-hospitals...
- spywaregorilla 5y agoI think this is part of it. Most locations did not actually experience hospital demand above capacity for long, if at all. Probably in large part due to the effectiveness of lockdowns.