# 3548
One of the concerns for later this fall and winter is that the demand for medical care due to the pandemic may outstrip out ability to provide it.
The problem isn’t so much the percentage of severely ill people, which remains encouraging low . . . but the attack rate, which experts fear could run 3 times (or better) that of seasonal flu.
For most people, a bout with this flu has been a minor annoyance. A few days in bed with a fever, maybe a cough for a week, then back on the road to recovery.
But for a relatively few, it has turned into a life-and-death struggle.
And these unlucky individuals have often needed more than just a hospital bed . . . they’ve needed intensive care, including a ventilator, sometimes for weeks.
The availability of intensive care beds and staff (beds don’t take care of patients . . . nurses do) along with ventilators has, thus far, helped reduce the fatality rate in many countries from this virus.
But these resources are limited, particularly for pediatric patients, who have been disproportionately harder hit by this virus than from seasonal flu.
Which has a lot of people worried about tough triage decisions that could be required later this fall and winter.
This report from e! Science News, on a study which appears in the British Journal Anaesthesia on the UK’s surge capacity during a pandemic.
While focusing on the UK, the same concerns exist worldwide.
Pandemic could overwhelm critical care beds in England, especially children's units
Published: Friday, July 24, 2009
Experts in intensive care and anaesthesia have predicted that the current swine flu pandemic could overwhelm critical care beds and ventilators in England, with hospitals on the South East Coast, and in the South West, East of England and East Midlands, being worst hit. The research, fast-tracked for online publication by Anaesthesia, suggests that demand for critical care beds could outstrip supply by up to 130 per cent, with up to 20 per cent excess demand for ventilators in some regions.
"Any predictions need to be based on the most accurate information available at the time and we recognise that we are in the early stages of the pandemic" says Dr Ari Ercole, a member of the research group led by Professor David Menon from the University of Cambridge.
"However, based on figures provided by the ten regional health authorities and using the FLUSURGE model developed by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in the USA, we can see that hospitals would face massive excess demand even if the pandemic lasted an optimistic twelve weeks.
"Paediatric intensive care facilities for children under 15 would be quickly exhausted, as they make up 10 per cent of current provision but could face 30 per cent of the demand for pandemic related beds.
"Early experience of the present strain suggests that the attack rate is particularly high in the young and that this virus may severely compromise the immune systems of people who contract it."
