Modeling the effect of Fangcang shelter hospitals on the control of COVID-19 epidemic.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has posed a tremendous threat to the public and health authorities. Wuhan, as one of the cities experiencing the earliest COVID-19 outbreak, has successfully tackled the epidemic finally. The main reason is the implementing of Fangcang shelter hospitals, which rapidly and massively scale the health system's capacity to treat COVID-19 confirmed cases with mild symptoms. To give insights on what degree Fangcang shelter hospitals have contained COVID-19 in Wuhan, we proposed a piecewise smooth model regarding the patient triage scheme and the bed capacities of Fangcang shelter hospitals and designated hospitals. We used data on the cumulative number of confirmed cases, recovered cases, deaths, and data on the number of hospitalized individuals in Fangcang shelter hospitals and designated hospitals in Wuhan to parameterize the targeted model. Our results showed that diminishing the bed capacity or delaying the opening time of Fangcang shelter hospitals, both would result in worsening the epidemic by increasing the total number of infectives and hospitalized individuals and the effective reproduction number R e ( t ) . The findings demonstrated that Fangcang shelter hospitals avoided 17,013 critical infections and 17,823 total infections while it saved 7 days during the process of controlling the effective reproduction number R e ( t ) < 1 . Our study highlighted the critical role of Fangcang shelter hospitals in curbing and eventually stopping COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China. These findings may provide a valuable reference for decision-makers in regarding ramping up the health system capacity to isolate groups of people with mild symptoms in areas of widespread infection.