Monitoring the Health System Saturation Risk During COVID-19 Pandemics

The pressure on the sanitary system caused by the Covid-19 pandemics put in risk many lives. The unknowns of the pandemic behavior caused problems for a more accurate prediction of the demands for hospitalization and ICU. As a result, two situations were observed: unnecessary expansion of the sanitary system with campaign hospitals and, worse, the saturation of the system with or without expansion. This article proposes the use of a backwards approach to compare the data predicted by a SD model with the real data obtained from the hospitals in the Basque Country. The goal was to calibrate the model to be better prepared for the eventual new wave of infections reducing the risk of collapse or unnecessary response actions to the emergency.