One of the issues raised by the pandemic, one of the reasons that led to a total lockdown between March 9th and May 4th, 2020 is the pandemic’s impact on the national health system, i.e. it’s ability to provide adequate assistance both to Sars-CoV-2 positive patients and to negative ones. Intensive care admissions is one of the elements that allow us to evaluate this impact.

ICUs occupancy rate is one of the elements for monitoring the progress of the pandemic included in the decree of the Ministry of Health of April 30th, 2020, the document that regulated the management of what at the time was defined as Phase 2, i.e. the easing of lockdown measures. The text set the critical threshold in 30% bed occupancy in intensive care by Covid patients, after which the health system would struggle to take care of every patient.

To try to describe the impact on intensive care departments, Foias sent to healthcare companies and hospitals also concerned the number of patients admitted to intensive care in the months of March and April 2020. The answers obtained are displayed in the map that opens this page: the larger a point, the greater the number of Sars-CoV-2 positive people who needed intensive care hospitalization.

As you can see by looking at the map, the impact was very different amongst Italian regions. Lombardy, the most affected area during the first wave, saw a higher number of patients admitted to intensive care units. The highest number, equal to 349 patients, was reported by Asst Papa Giovanni XXIII, a reality that manages the homonym hospital in Bergamo, the Italian city most affected by the first phase of the pandemic.

Using the filter placed above the map (below for desk readers) it is possible to isolate a single region. This graph, using data provided by the Protezione civile, instead shows the trend of admissions in intensive care on a national basis between March 1st and April 30th 2020: