The SIMID consortium prepared a new technical note (v2021-09-14) containing the model estimates of hospital admissions and ICU load by a stochastic dynamic transmission model using observational data up to September 2021.

The full document is available here.

Conclusions

• Social mixing and thus risk behavior still drives the projected burden of disease. An increase of +50% of the risk behavior we estimated for August 2021 would result in a high pressure on hospital capacity on the national level, which is in line with the projections using the “September 2020” behavior. If the increase in risk behavior is only +30% of the August 2021 situation, we project on average only half of the daily hospital admissions and ICU load.

• A regional analysis for the Brussels Capital Region shows that an increase of +50% of the behavior we estimated for August 2021, could result in a high pressure on hospital capacity.

• When we explore behavioral changes from September 1st, 2021, they lead to different outcomes from the second half of September 2021 onward. In combination with the current variability in reported daily COVID-19 related hospital admissions, we cannot select or rule out any scenario at this moment in time. The transmission model we use is suited for scenario analyses to investigate possible future paths, it is not a prediction model.