Extubation – Day 17, Thoughts About The Pandemic

The Calm Before the Storm?

Daily thoughts & numbers on the COVID-19 pandemic from a M.D. working in the front lines at the Emergency Department in a hospital in Stockholm, Sweden.

These last days we’ve seen an unsettling calm compared to the previous weekend.

Less ambulances and less patient in-flow in our ICUs, and as many of the previous patients admitted at the ICU are now being extubated and moved to other wards there is, once again, some margin in the system.

Now there is, once again, room to breathe.

Suddenly we find ourselves over-staffed and (well?) prepared for yet another storm.

The question that springs to mind is: has the tide shifted?

Or is this just a normal fluctuation in the pandemic? The curve might still be trending upwards, but day to day, or even week to week, there will be big differences in the rate of incoming critically ill COVID-19 patients to the hospital.

Looking at one model of Sweden, the peak resource use is (currently since the graph is updated continuously as new data is admitted to the model) reached about 25th of April: *

Also, worth noting, the numbers in the model are not updated. There’s been a considerable amount of mobilization of, among other resources, ICU beds and Stockholm alone has more than tripled the number of available ICU beds. We are not yet at the capacity projected in the model at the peak date (1 169 ICU beds) but we do currently have a lot more than the 79 ICU beds stated in the model as our available resources.

COVID-19 Numbers Sweden 2020-04-10 *

870 deaths nationally
- 510 of them in Stockholm
9 685 confirmed cases nationally
DEATHS [SWE]

New confirmed deaths daily in Sweden.
(Number of COVID-19 cases over time in Sweden, updates during mornings at 14:00 so todays numbers are not yet complete until the next day).
ICU [SWE]

New Covid-19 patients Being Treated at the ICU in Sweden.
(Number of COVID-19 cases over time in Sweden, updates during mornings at 14:00 so todays numbers are not yet complete until the next day).
NEW CONFIRMED CASES [SWE]

New confirmed cases daily in Sweden.
(Number of COVID-19 cases over time in Sweden, updates during mornings at 14:00 so todays numbers are not yet complete until the next day).
TOTAL CONFIRMED CASES [SWE]

New confirmed cases accumulated over time in Sweden.
(Number of COVID-19 cases over time in Sweden, updates during mornings at 14:00 so todays numbers are not yet complete until the next day).
Intensive care Sweden: *
- 748 COVID-19 confirmed patients treated in the ICU in total so far
- 10,3 days from symptoms to ICU
- 24,6 % women
  
  Total number of recorded of COVID-19 patients needing ICU care each week. From Week 10 it seems to more than triple each week for the first 4 weeks. From week ten: 5 → 24 → 129 → 424 → 746 → (939 this week up until now, however since it’s only friday this weeks numbers are yet incomplete)