Abstract
In recent decades, several outbreaks have threatened societies and claimed many lives. Outbreak response management plays a crucial role in reducing the fatality rate and the total healthcare system cost. Among all the parameters affecting the performance of the outbreak response system, the available resources are one of the most important. This becomes critical when the number of infected people who need such resources is substantial. In such circumstances, the system cost and the death rate may significantly rise. Therefore, in this paper, we present an analysis of the impact of the contact frequency among people during an outbreak considering the capacity of the healthcare system expressed as the total number of hospital beds following a systems dynamics approach. We investigate the case of the novel Coronavirus, known as COVID-19, in Iran for which the results indicate the circumstances under which the healthcare system may become exhausted, and a catastrophe may occur. Finally, some suggestions are made based on the analysis of the results to avoid such circumstances.
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