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207056

Analysis of Coronavirus Patients Flow in Hospitals: An Application of Queuing Theory

Article

Last updated: 24 Dec 2024

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Abstract

During the Coronavirus disease 2019 crisis, many hospitals suffered from a severe shortage of resources. This was due to the exponential growth in the number of recorded cases. In many world countries, COVID-19 patients had to wait for a free bed which puts their lives at risk. Therefore, hospitals are forced to raise the limits of their permissible resources to be able to afford all cases. In this paper, The queuing theory model was used as an operations management technique to calculate the number of needed beds that must be available to cover all recorded cases. Based on the available information, Italy was chosen as a case study - which was one of the hotspot countries in the beginning of the crisis after China. An analysis of the behavior of the waiting lines in hospitals is introduced from the beginning of the crisis and for more than one year later. According to queuing theory formulas, the number of the required hospital beds and ICU beds are determined. Moreover, the probability of waiting and the utilization of the system are also calculated. By testing the system, we concluded that 20000 hospital beds were required to accommodate about 99% of hospital patients recorded in the highest period of infection. In addition, 2500 ICU beds were needed to serve 100% of ICU patients recorded in the same period. The expected waiting delay that patients suffered because of the waiting queues is also measured.

DOI

10.21608/ijci.2021.90451.1057

Keywords

COVID-19, pandemic, Queuing Theory, Beds, waiting time

Authors

First Name

Walaa

Last Name

Abdellatief

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Information Technology department, Faculty of Computers and Information, Menoufia University, Egypt.

Email

walaaali285@gmail.com

City

EGYPT

Orcid

-

First Name

Amira

Last Name

Abdelatey

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

Information System department, Faculty of Computers and Information, Menofia University, Egypt.

Email

amira.mohamed@ci.menofia.edu.eg

City

-

Orcid

-

Volume

9

Article Issue

1

Related Issue

29711

Issue Date

2022-01-01

Receive Date

2021-08-12

Publish Date

2022-01-01

Page Start

46

Page End

59

Print ISSN

1687-7853

Online ISSN

2735-3257

Link

https://ijci.journals.ekb.eg/article_207056.html

Detail API

https://ijci.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=207056

Order

5

Type

Original Article

Type Code

877

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

IJCI. International Journal of Computers and Information

Publication Link

https://ijci.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Analysis of Coronavirus Patients Flow in Hospitals: An Application of Queuing Theory

Details

Type

Article

Created At

22 Jan 2023