On the timing of interventions to preserve hospital capacity: lessons to be learned from the Belgian SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in 2020

Using publicly available data on the number of new hospitalisations we use a newly developed statistical model to produce a phase portrait to monitor the epidemic allowing for assessing whether or not intervention measures are needed to keep hospital capacity under control. The phase portrait is called a cliquets’ diagram, referring to the discrete alarm phases it points to. Using this cliquets’ diagram we show that intervention measures were associated with an effective mitigation of a Summer resurgence but that too little too late was done to prevent a large autumn wave in Belgium. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13690-021-00685-2.