A country-level analysis comparing hospital capacity and utilisation during the first COVID-19 wave across Europe

TL;DR: These international comparisons of hospital resilience, based on studies of contrasting contexts and epidemiological situations, allowed researchers to identify lessons learned to support hospital decision-makers in thinking more deeply about managing future health crises.

TL;DR: An epidemiological SARS-CoV-2 infection model for Germany, with its 16 federal states and 400 districts, that describes infections as well as COVID-19 inpatients, ICU patients with and without mechanical ventilation, recoveries, and fatalities during the first two waves of the pandemic until April 2021 is developed.

TL;DR: The prevalence of critical illness in a Swedish region was higher than previous, indirect estimates, suggesting a hidden burden of critical illness of potential public health, health system and hospital management significance.

TL;DR: In this article, the authors looked at innovations the study hospitals introduced in response to challenges caused by COVID-19 to identify attributes of the innovations that make them conducive to adoption and organizational factors that facilitate the creation and implementation of innovative health care approaches during health system shocks.

TL;DR: In the German health-care system, in which hospital capacities have not been overwhelmed by the COVID-19 pandemic, mortality has been high for patients receiving mechanical ventilation, particularly for patients aged 80 years or older and those requiring dialysis, and has been considerably lower for patients younger than 60 years.

TL;DR: The combined summary LoS distributions provided here can be used to model bed demands for contingency planning and then updated, with the novel method presented here, as more studies with aggregated statistics emerge outside China.

TL;DR: The transmission potential of COVID-19 is very high and the number of critical cases may become largely unsustainable for the healthcare system in a very short-time horizon; a slight decrease of the reproduction number is observed, possibly connected with an increased population awareness and early effect of interventions.

TL;DR: Unless COVID-19 hospitalisations drop to low levels, there is a continued need to enhance critical care capacity in England with field hospitals, use of private hospitals or deployment of former and newly qualified medical staff to allow some or all elective surgery to take place.