Giving Compass' Take:

• Matt Shipman explains how researchers found that dedicated clinics can help to flatten the curve during a flu pandemic, revealing potential for addressing the COVID-19 crisis. 

• What would it take to create sufficient dedicated COOVID-19 clinics where they are needed? What role can funders play in advancing long-term solutions for addressing the pandemic? 

• Consider supporting a fund like the National Association of Free & Charitable Clinics' COVID-19 Response Fund. 

Opening clinics dedicated specifically to treating influenza can limit the number of people infected and help to “flatten the curve,” or reduce the peak prevalence rate, a new study shows.

While the work focused on influenza, the findings are relevant for policymakers seeking ways to reduce impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

“Dedicated clinics would have less of an impact than interventions such as vaccination, but at the statewide level, we’re talking about cutting the overall number of infections by six figures,” says Julie Swann, professor of industrial and systems engineering at North Carolina State University and corresponding author of the paper on the work in PLOS ONE.

Some hospitals’ opening of dedicated H1N1 clinics during the H1N1 influenza pandemic in 2009-2010 inspired Swann and her collaborators to do the study. These clinics focused exclusively on treating patients who exhibited H1N1 symptoms.

There was some question at the time as to whether these clinics were a good use of limited resources—and it was also unclear as to whether the clinics may have had unintended consequences, such as spreading H1N1 to patients who showed up at the dedicated clinic with flu-like symptoms, but didn’t actually have the disease.

The researchers found that opening dedicated clinics reduced disease spread and hospitalizations, particularly when open during the periods of peak prevalence—when the most people are sick. Specifically, the researchers found that if dedicated clinics remained open for the entire duration of the pandemic, the clinics would have reduced the overall number of infections by 0.4-1.5%; reduced peak prevalence (or “flattened the curve”) by 0.07-0.32%; and reduced hospitalizations by 0.02-0.09%.

Read the full article about dedicated clinics by Matt Shipman at Futurity.