The SIMID consortium prepared a new technical note (v2021-11-16) containing the model estimates of hospital admissions and ICU load by a short term prediction model and a stochastic dynamic transmission model using observational data up to November 16th, 2021.

Conclusions

  • The short-term prediction model forecasts between 298 and 543 new hospital admissions on November 26th, 2021. The ICU-related prediction model shows over 740 patients in ICU on November 26th. If the same speed of growth continues, there is a chance that 1000 ICU beds for COVID-19 patients are needed by the beginning of December.

  • The stochastic transmission model for Belgium shows that if the transmission dynamics, captured by the effective reproduction number Rt, remains stable until November 21st 2021 and subsequently decreases, a peak ICU load around 750 beds could be reached by the beginning of December 2021. If Rt remains at a stable level until December 2021, the peak ICU load will be even higher and it will take longer to gradually decrease to a level below 500 ICU beds.

  • If the speed at which new infections occur slows down in the second half of November 2021, implying a decreasing Rt value, an ICU load up to 650 beds could be expected based on the stochastic model projections. A stronger reduction in Rt, would lead to a more rapid decline in ICU load after the 650 bed peak, to less than 500 beds by the second week of December.

  • Infections as a result of social interactions drive the projected hospital burden. Whether an hypothesized decrease or increase in transmission rates (translated into a change in Rt) is of the specific magnitude we assumed for the coming period, is impossible to estimate at this point in time. However, we present a range of plausible scenarios for Rt evolution, similar to the scenarios we formulated in our previous reports according to a percentage change in social contact behaviour/transmission rates.

The full document from November (v2021-11-16) is available here.

The SIMID consortium wrote also technical notes in September and October 2021 to share with the GEMS. We updated the Figures on November 18th, 2021, with the reported data from Sciensano.

The updated Technical Note from September (v2021-09-14) is available here.

The updated Technical Note from October (v2021-10-12) is available here.