Critical care demand and intensive care supply for patients in Japan with COVID-19 at the time of the state of emergency declaration in April 2020: a descriptive analysis.

AbstractBackgroundThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, due to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), threatened to overwhelm Japan’s intensive care capacity due to the rising numbers of infected patients. This study aimed to determine the number of critically ill patients with COVID-19 who required intensive care, including mechanical ventilation and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), during the pandemic and to compare these patient numbers with Japan’s overall intensive care capacity.MethodsJapanese Society of Intensive Care Medicine datasets were used to obtain the number of confirmed patients with COVID-19 who had undergone mechanical ventilation and ECMO between February 15 and June 4 2020, to determine and compare intensive care unit (ICU) and attending bed needs for patients with COVID-19, and to estimate peak ICU demands in Japan.ResultsIn total, 17968 ICU days, 15171 mechanical ventilation days, and 2797 ECMO days were attributable to patients with COVID-19. There was a median (interquartile range) 143 (63-255) patients in ICU, 124 (51-225) patients on mechanical ventilation, and 18 (15-36) patients on ECMO machines. During the epidemic peak in late April, 11443 patients (1.03 per 10000 adults) had been infected, 373 patients (0.034 per 10000 adults) were in ICU, 312 patients (0.028 per 10000 adults) were receiving mechanical ventilation, and 62 patients (0.0056 per 10000 adults) were on ECMO machines per day. The number of infected patients at the peak of the epidemic was 651% of total designated beds and the number of patients requiring intensive care at the peak of the epidemic was 6.0% of total ICU beds in Japan, 19.1% of total board-certified intensivists in Japan and 106% of total designated medical institutions for Category II infectious diseases in Japan, respectively.ConclusionsFollowing the state of emergency declaration on April 7 2020, the number of patients with COVID-19 and the number of critically ill patients continued to rise, exceeding the number of designated beds but not exceeding ICU capacity. Urgent nationwide and regional planning is needed to prevent an overwhelming burden on ICUs in relation to critically ill patients with COVID-19 in Japan.