Modelling the impact of COVID-19 on intensive care services in New South Wales

[Extract] Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) poses extraordinary challenges for health care in Australia. One of the greatest will be the pressure on hospitals to support people with severe disease. Modelling studies can provide valuable insights into the likely course of the epidemic, and can be particularly useful for anticipating resource requirements, including demand for intensive care services at the peak of the epidemic. In this report, we extrapolate the findings of the Imperial College model of the pandemic1 to the New South Wales population. We also developed a simple SEIR (susceptible–exposed/incubating–infected–removed) model to explore the effect of varying the infection reproduction number (R), which can be reduced by effective social distancing measures, on the timing of the peak of the epidemic