COVID 19 healthcare facility demand forecasts for rural residents

One of the main challenges in dealing with the current COVID 19 pandemic is how to fulfill the healthcare facility demands especially for the residents living in the rural areas that have restricted healthcare access. Correspondingly, this study aims to record the daily COVID 19 cases and continue with the forecasting of the average daily demand (ADD) of healthcare facilities including beds, ICUs, and ventilators using ARIMA model. The forecasts were made for 3 rural populations located in the southern Amazon. The model shows that the healthcare ADD was different in each population. Likewise, the model forecasts that in a rural population that has the highest daily case with projected average cases equal to 67 cases/day (95%CI: 24, 110), that population has to fulfill healthcare ADD consisting of 57 beds/day (95%CI: 21, 93), 8 ICUs/day (95%CI: 2, 14), and 2 ventilators/day (95%CI: 2, 3). To conclude, the ARIMA model has addressed critical questions about ADD for beds, ICUs, and ventilators for rural residents. This ARIMA model based healthcare plan will hopefully provide versatile tool to improve healthcare resource allocations.