• Juan Li, Pei Yuan, Jane Heffernan, Tingting Zheng, Nick Ogden, Beate Sander, Jun Li, Qi Li, Jacques Bélair, Jude Dzevela Kong, Elena Aruffo, Yi Tan, Zhen Jin, Yong Yu, Meng Fan, Jingan Cui, Zhidong Teng, and Huaiping Zhu.
• Centre for Disease Modelling, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3, Canada.
• Bull. World Health Organ. 2020 Dec 1; 98 (12): 830-841D.

ObjectiveTo design models of the spread of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) in Wuhan and the effect of Fangcang shelter hospitals (rapidly-built temporary hospitals) on the control of the epidemic.MethodsWe used data on daily reported confirmed cases of COVID-19, recovered cases and deaths from the official website of the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission to build compartmental models for three phases of the COVID-19 epidemic. We incorporated the hospital-bed capacity of both designated and Fangcang shelter hospitals. We used the models to assess the success of the strategy adopted in Wuhan to control the COVID-19 epidemic.FindingsBased on the 13 348 Fangcang shelter hospitals beds used in practice, our models show that if the Fangcang shelter hospitals had been opened on 6 February (a day after their actual opening), the total number of COVID-19 cases would have reached 7 413 798 (instead of 50 844) with 1 396 017 deaths (instead of 5003), and the epidemic would have lasted for 179 days (instead of 71).ConclusionWhile the designated hospitals saved lives of patients with severe COVID-19, it was the increased hospital-bed capacity of the large number of Fangcang shelter hospitals that helped slow and eventually stop the COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan. Given the current global pandemic of COVID-19, our study suggests that increasing hospital-bed capacity, especially through temporary hospitals such as Fangcang shelter hospitals, to isolate groups of people with mild symptoms within an affected region could help curb and eventually stop COVID-19 outbreaks in communities where effective household isolation is not possible.(c) 2020 The authors; licensee World Health Organization.

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