Rutgers University-Camden recommends social isolating to minimize people from contracting COVID-19 and being admitted to South Jersey hospitals.

Several Rutgers-Camden employees wrote “Regional Health System Shortfalls with a novel COVID-19 model” for the Senator Walter Rand Institute for Public Affairs and the Center for Computational and Integrative Biology at Rutgers University-Camden in collaboration with New Jersey Health Initiatives to explore the potential spread of COVID-19 relative to hospital capacity in southern New Jersey.

The Senator Walter Rand Institute for Public Affairs is an applied research and public service center at Rutgers University-Camden that addresses issues impacting residents and communities in southern New Jersey.

The authors wrote that “[s]ocial distancing practices can prevent COVID 19’s spread from overwhelming health care systems. Across the globe, various levels of social distancing policies and practices have been implemented to delay and reduce the outbreak of COVID-19.”

A startling finding of the report included how varying levels of response to COVID-19 will diminish the impact upon South Jersey hospitals. The study juxtaposes the number of available hospital beds against predicted need modeled on scenarios related to the level of advance action.

One takeaway: without significant precautionary planning, South Jersey, which has 5,689 hospital beds, could be short 85,000 hospital beds; they could receive more patients than they can handle if people do not take social distancing steps. The Rutgers University–Camden research center shows how “flattening the curve” can work to everyone’s benefit in South Jersey.

The authors of the report include: Sarah Allred, Sean McQuade, Nathaniel Merrill, Benedetto Piccoli, Darren Spielman, Carla Villacis, Ross Whiting, Aayush Yadav, Douglas Zacher and Devon Ziminski