Unbiased Indicators of Hospitals Occupancy during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Unbiased indicators of hospitals occupancy during the COVID-19 pandemy
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25115/eea.v40i2.6351Keywords:
Composite index, COVID-19 , Health policiesAbstract
Most public health agencies in regions or countries report the SARS-COV2 disease situation on a daily basis based on cases confirmed by various diagnostic tests. They also report other indicators such as deaths, admissions and intensive care admissions as supplementary information. However, due to the lack of uniform criteria and the adoption in each hospital of ad hoc measures to deal with the increase in cases, epidemiologic curves based on confirmed infections do not allow comparison between regions or countries analyzed. In this article we present a simple composite indicator that measures health occupancy using a fixed reference system. This indicator makes it possible to know and compare the state of health systems, without the deviation in the information produced by the adoption of individual measures that aim to adapt hospitals to the daily evolution of the epidemic.
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