COVID-19: Mortality risk increases by 20% when ICUs are full

Patients admitted to very full hospitals have an increased chance of dying which is equivalent to being up to 11 years older, according to a new study co-led by UCL researchers. The study, published as a pre-print* on MedRxiv , analysed data from 4032 patients with COVID-19 who were admitted to Intensive Care Units (ICU) with presumed or confirmed Covid-19 in the first lockdown. Researchers studied patient ICU outcomes from 2 April to 1 June, 2020, and assessed the impact of availability of beds with access to mechanical ventilators, as this is crucial indicator of hospital strain during the pandemic. The findings show that when ICU reached 85% capacity (the rate at which a medical emergency is declared), 38.4% (1,548) of patients admitted to an ICU died and the probability of dying was 19% higher. When ICU capacity was lower than 45%, mortality risk decreased by 25%. Corresponding author , Dr Bilal Mateen, (UCL Institute of Health Informatics), said: "To put into context as to why these results are so important - at the end of 2020, 37 of 123 recorded NHS trusts were experiencing over 85% ICU bed occupancy; 11 of these were completely full and the situation has only got more extreme. "Our results show the association between risk of death and bed occupancy is linear and as occupancy increases the worse patients' outcomes become.