Broadly, health care systems refer to all activities whose principal function is to promote, restore, and preserve health. Its major components comprise health infrastructure and health workforce. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared a novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak a global pandemic. Respiratory disease varying from asymptomatic, mild to severe is the primary manifestation of the virus, with 14% of cases already classified as severe. This essay attempts to determine the effects of this virus on the health care system.

Firstly, since the events are continuously unraveling and data ever-changing, data from previous pandemics can be extrapolated to the current situation. Assuming the outbreak mirrors the influenza pandemic of 1968, twice the number of the current 95,000 ICU beds in the US will be required (Swerdlow, 2020). The expected influx of patients will be met with scarce ICU resources, therefore emerges a need to develop contingency plans ( Sedes et al., 2020). These include cessation of all elective activities, the prevision of critical care equipment among other measures to maximize material resource utilization.