Thread by @GidMK

There is, I think, an ongoing and pervasive misunderstanding about hospital 'capacity' during COVID-19

Capacity is NOT the TOTAL NUMBER of beds

It is the number of FREE beds

This is a very important point

So, for example, England had around 4,000 ICU beds at the start of the year

But they were operating at 85% capacity! So in fact they had more like 600 FREE ICU beds to treat COVID-19

What I mean by this is that, on any given day, 85% of the critical care beds were occupied by people - heart attacks, car crashes, urgent surgeries and the like

Now, capacity has been increased over the course of this year, and there are many contingency plans for a flood of patients, but it's worthwhile noting that COVID-19 can push a place 'over capacity' with a 15% increase in the number of patients going to ICU

Think about that context when you see numbers like 1000 patients in ICU in England. In a normal year, that would push hospitals over capacity across the country 😬

Oh, and important to add (as many have already) that a free 'bed' is not just the physical bed, but the expert staff to manage the patient and stop them from dying

Having worked in hospital finance, it is easy to use the shorthand 'beds' when I really mean 'everything that goes into treating a patient' because we usually measure all that stuff with bed numbers

Something further to add - the free bed capacity is not a fixed number, and usually varies over the seasons. Most hospitals operate at close to 100% capacity during winter ALREADY, which makes the COVID-19 situation in Europe even more worrying