太恐怖！
【I'm an NHS doctor treating coronavirus – you have no idea how bad things could get】
For an idea of how quickly case numbers can explode, look to Italy. One week after it hit 320 cases, the country reported 2,036; a week later, nearly 10,000; next week that number will likely rise to 50,000 or more. There’s nothing I have seen that tells me the exact same thing isn’t coming for us in the UK. We only have around 4,000 intensive care unit (ICU) beds in England, 80% of which are already full. If we follow the same trajectory as Italy, with 10% of coronavirus patients needing ICU treatment, we will need 200 beds next week, 1,000 the week after. That’s already the entire ICU capacity. Every two days after that, we will need twice the number of beds again.
……
Unabated, we could see a million coronavirus cases or more in a month’s time. What happens after that, I don’t know. One thing I do know, however, is that the Italian mortality rate seems much higher than China’s (around 7%, versus 4%), a fact mostly explained by how Italian local healthcare has been pushed to breaking point. Reading the accounts of Italian doctors dealing with their outbreak reads like a warzone. Hospitals diverting all clinical staff to the care of ventilated patients. This is not healthcare but “catastrophe medicine”, of the kind one usually encounters on the battlefield; save who can be saved, leave the rest.
For an idea of how quickly case numbers can explode, look to Italy. One week after it hit 320 cases, the country reported 2,036; a week later, nearly 10,000; next week that number will likely rise to 50,000 or more. There’s nothing I have seen that tells me the exact same thing isn’t coming for us in the UK. We only have around 4,000 intensive care unit (ICU) beds in England, 80% of which are already full. If we follow the same trajectory as Italy, with 10% of coronavirus patients needing ICU treatment, we will need 200 beds next week, 1,000 the week after. That’s already the entire ICU capacity. Every two days after that, we will need twice the number of beds again.
……
Unabated, we could see a million coronavirus cases or more in a month’s time. What happens after that, I don’t know. One thing I do know, however, is that the Italian mortality rate seems much higher than China’s (around 7%, versus 4%), a fact mostly explained by how Italian local healthcare has been pushed to breaking point. Reading the accounts of Italian doctors dealing with their outbreak reads like a warzone. Hospitals diverting all clinical staff to the care of ventilated patients. This is not healthcare but “catastrophe medicine”, of the kind one usually encounters on the battlefield; save who can be saved, leave the rest.
