Quantitative evaluation of the role of Fangcang shelter hospitals in the control of Omicron transmission: A case study of the outbreak in Shanghai, China in 2022

Since Omicron began to spread in China, Shanghai has become one of the cities with more severe outbreaks. Under the comprehensive consideration of the vaccine coverage rate, the number of Fangcang shelter hospital beds and the number of designated hospital beds in Shanghai, this paper established a deterministic compartmental model and used the Nelder-Mead Simplex Direct Search Algorithm and chi-square values to estimate the model parameters. we calculate ℛ(0) = 3.6429 when the number of beds in the Fangcang shelter hospital is relatively tight in the second stage and ℛ(0) = 0.4974 in the fifth stage when there are enough beds in both Fangcang shelter hospital and designated hospital. Then we perform a sensitivity analysis on ℛ(0) by using perturbation of fixed point estimation of model parameters in the fifth stage, and obtain three parameters that are more sensitive to ℛ(0), which are transmission rate (β(1d)), proportion of the infectious (η) and the hospitalization rate of asymptomatic infected cases (δ(1)). Through simulation, we obtain that if the hospitalization rate of asymptomatic infections δ(2) > 0.9373 or the transmission rate β(1b) < 0.0467, the second stage of Omicron transmission in Shanghai can be well controlled. Finally, we find the measure that converting the National Convention and Exhibition Center (NECC) into a Fangcang shelter hospital has played an important role in curbing the epidemic. Whether this temporary Fangcang shelter hospital is not built or delayed, the cumulative number of confirmed cases will both exceed 100,000, and the cumulative asymptomatic infections will both exceed 1 million. In addition, for a city of 10 million people, we obtain that if a permanent Fangcang shelter hospital with 17,784 beds is built ahead of epidemic, there will be no shortage of beds during the outbreak of Omicron. Our findings enrich the content of the impact of Fangcang shelter hospital beds on the spread of Omicron and confirm the correct policy adopted by the Chinese government.