Assessment of Regional Health Resource Carrying Capacity and Security in Public Health Emergencies Based on the COVID-19 Outbreak

Abstract

The Omicron variant of COVID-19, which emerged at the end of 2021, has caused a new wave of infections around the world and is causing a new wave of the crisis due to the extreme variability of the pathogen. In response to public health emergencies such as SARS and COVID-19, the first task is to identify the vulnerabilities of regional health systems and perform a comprehensive assessment of the region’s resilience. In this paper, we take the carrying capacity of medical resources as the focus; evaluate the medical, human, and financial resources of various regions; and construct an epidemic safety index based on the actual situation or future trend of the epidemic outbreak to evaluate and predict the risk level of each region in response to the epidemic. The study firstly evaluates the epidemic safety index for each province and city in China and 150 countries around the world, using the first wave of the COVID-19 epidemic in 2020 and the Omicron variant virus in 2022 as the background, respectively, and justifies the index through the actual performance in terms of epidemic prevention and control, based on which the epidemic safety index for 150 countries in the next year is predicted. The conclusions show that Europe, the Americas, and parts of Asia will face a significant risk of epidemic shocks in the coming period and that countries need to formulate policies in response to the actual situation of the epidemic.