key: cord-0731109-hh01e7hr
authors: Díaz-Guio, Diego Andres; Villamil-Gómez, Wilmer E.; Dajud, Luis; Pérez-Díaz, Carlos E.; Bonilla-Aldana, D. Katterine; Mondragon-Cardona, Alvaro; Cardona-Ospina, Jaime A.; Gómez, José F.; Rodríguez-Morales, Alfonso J.
title: Will Colombian intensive care units collapse due to the COVID-19 pandemic?
date: 2020-05-16
journal: Travel Med Infect Dis
DOI: 10.1016/j.tmaid.2020.101746
sha: ccc241684f6b9187d3e9a0032a851c3ab24c9eef
doc_id: 731109
cord_uid: hh01e7hr

nan

Words: 529. References: 6. Figures: 1.

Dear Editor,

The current Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, due to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), further impacts already precarious healthcare infrastructures that are already stretched in Latin America [1] . One of the major concerns in this setting is the management of severe cases of COVID-19. Some estimates indicate that between 10 and 30% of patients with COVID-19 will require admittance to an intensive care unit (ICU) [2] . In countries with limited resources, a relative, but particularly absolute increase in the number of patients requiring ICU may overcome existing infrastructures [3, 4] . This is the potential scenario of some countries in Latin America, such as Ecuador, that have apparently already saturated their capacities [5] . For others, such as Colombia, the question remains if ICU will collapse in terms of capacity.

The COVID-19 arrived in Latin America in February 26, 2020, with the first case diagnosed in Brazil [4, 6] . After that on March 6, 2020, the first case was diagnosed in Colombia. Some 60 days after the first case (May 4, 2020), a total of 7,973 cases have been confirmed by RT-PCR, at the National Institute of Health (www.ins.gov.co) and the national collaborating laboratory network for SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis. The trend shows that a still increasing daily number of new cases ( Figure 1 ), but from the total, 1,807 cases (22.7%) have recovered (negative follow-up RT-PCR) and 358 (4.5%) have died.

Among those 5,808 active cases, 90.4% of them have been managed at home (asymptomatic and mild cases), 7.5% have been hospitalized (moderate cases) and 2.1% (120) have been admitted to ICU (severe cases). 

In the eye of the storm: Infectious disease challenges for border countries receiving Venezuelan migrants

Clinical, laboratory and imaging features of COVID-19: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Managing COVID-19 in Low-and Middle-Income Countries

COVID-19 in Latin America: The implications of the first confirmed case in Brazil

COVID-19 and dengue, co-epidemics in Ecuador and other countries in Latin America: Pushing strained health care systems over the edge

Rodríguez-Morales AJ. Deep impact of COVID-19 in the healthcare of Latin America: the case of Brazil. The Brazilian Journal of Infectious Diseases