Increasing Australia's annual ICU capacity by 10 times at an initial outlay of $ 35 Billion would have cost 5-7 times less than Morrison & Co's "whatever it takes" Wuhan/COVID19 virus strategy, currently costing $350 Billion

by Ganesh Sahathevan



Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the state premiers, especially Gladys Berejiklian of NSW and Daniel Andrews of Victoria have not in the past two months to let us know how much in taxpayers money they are prepared to throw away to "fight" the Wuhan/COVID19 virus.

They have collectively committed to spend in the next three to six months in excess of $ 360 Billion in order to do "whatever it takes" to "save lives".
Much of the spending has been justified on the basis that they need time to build Australia's ICU capacity. The cost involved in doing has never been mentioned.


In an article published in the Medical Journal Of Australia in September 2019 the cost of operating ICU beds in Australia is approximately $2 Billion per annum.:

“The mean cost per patient bed-day for all contributing ICUs in 2013-2014 was $4375. Today in 2019 this would almost $5000,” Litton and colleagues reported.

“Higher ICU bed number and occupancy were each significantly associated with lower costs per patient bed-day; bed number did not influence annual cost per bed.

“The estimated total annual operational cost for ICU care in Australia was $2.119 billion, about 0.15% of gross domestic product and 1.4% of total health care costs. Staffing accounted for about 80% of ICU operational costs. Larger ICUs were associated with lower costs for medical staff but not for nursing staff.”

The above does not include set-up costs, which have been independently estimated by this writer to be approximately $500,000 per bed. Dan Andrews of Victoria has said that Victoria would have needed 10,000 ICU beds. If that number is multiplied across every state, the whole country would have needed 70,000 beds. Assuming that these are all new beds the cost of providing the new beds would  be $35 Billion. 

Assuming that the increased ICU capacity does not include efficiency savings, the estimated total annual operational cost for ICU care in Australia would be $20 Billion, at peak rates of  infection.It does not seem likely, from what is reported in Europe, China and the US, that there would be a need for ongoing ICU support at the peak rate.Therefore the total expenditure would be about $55 Billion. 

This is approximately 5-7 times less than the $265-360 Billion (and counting:) that Morrison and Co will spend in six months, inflicting in the process other very high economic costs, still unaccounted for, of "hibernating" the entire economy.

END 

Surge capacity of Australian intensive care units associated with COVID-19 admissions