'We will not cope': Brisbane ICU specialist pleads for help with COVID-19

A Brisbane intensivist says the country does not have enough hospital beds to cope with the widespread outbreak of coronavirus and has begged the federal government to fund a team of data crunchers responding to the crisis.

John Fraser, head of intensive care at St Andrew's Hospital and a pre-eminent specialist at Prince Charles Hospital, and his small team of Brisbane researchers are co-ordinating the world's only data pool for clinicians on the frontline on COVID-19.

Medical workers treat patients in the isolated intensive care unit at a hospital in Wuhan in central China's Hubei province. Credit: AP

Dr Fraser, and his team at Brisbane's Critical Care Research Group, have been collecting data from 120 hospitals across 26 countries and four continents to offer real-time help for doctors and nurses treating COVID-19 patients.

They are the only people in the world analysing the data - and they don't have enough people to do it.

Dr Fraser said there was just one dedicated staff member trying to sift through more than 1000 emails each day from hospitals around the world.

"We are getting as much data as we can from these places and asking them what is working and what is not working," he said.

"It is so when I get faced with a 55-year-old with COVID-19, who has previously had diabetes, I have some evidence to guide me on what to do because at the moment I have nothing.

"This is a disease that didn't exist here 10 weeks ago.

"We cannot go and check a textbook or a journal for what the best evidence is, there is nothing written on it so it is a bit like driving 100km/h, blindfolded, with your mum in the car."

Dr Fraser said he needed $1 million from the government to fund a team of data crunchers to help the world figure out how to treat COVID-19 patients, and keep as many people out of ICU as possible.

"We don't have enough people to number-crunch, it is like having a car with no driver and there is a fire coming towards you - we know what to do, we just need staff to do it," he said.

Dr John Fraser is leading an international team of medical specialists fighting COVID-19.

"In Italy, 16 per cent of all hospitals' patients needed ICU care.

"We will not cope, we do not have enough intensive-care beds. Australia has great intensive care, but we just don't have the beds."

Dr Fraser said Queensland's ICUs would be at capacity "very soon".

"If it gets as bad as Italy, people who would normally get an ICU bed might not."

Queensland Health Minister Steven Miles said the health department was prepared to double intensive-care unit capacity, when required.

"If required, some elective surgery will be postponed freeing-up space in other wards," he said.

"We recently purchased 110 additional ventilators, which means if required we can turn other wards into ICU wards."

A health department spokeswoman said there were about 500 ICU beds in Queensland pre-pandemic and "our hospitals and expert clinicians are well equipped to manage this situation and save lives".

Neither the department nor Dr Miles would say how many of those ICU beds were outside greater Brisbane or what percentage of people who contract COVID-19 were likely to need intensive care.

Dr Fraser said when ICUs were full, intensivists would be forced to turn away older people with underlying conditions and preference younger people with a better chance of survival.

"The vaccination is going to be key, but it is a year off," he said.

"We have this data, I think it would be immoral not to use it.

"Now the rest of the world is looking to Australia to lead. We need politicians to stand shoulder to shoulder with us to get through this crisis.

"We need five or six team members to help us, I have taken my whole research team off all of the heart transplant work and we are working 24-7 on this."

Dr Fraser said letters and phone calls to federal Health Minister Greg Hunt, pleading for help, had gone unanswered.

Mr Hunt did not respond to Brisbane Times' request for comment either.

"They know who we are, they know where we are, we shouldn't be having to run after them, they should be asking how they can assist," Dr Fraser said.

In a speech to Parliament on Tuesday, Queensland LNP MP and addiction medicine specialist Dr Christian Rowan urged state and federal governments to support Dr Fraser's team.

Dr Rowan said the data pool, known as ECMOCARD (Extra-Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation for 2019 novel Coronavirus Acute Respiratory Disease), had the capacity to guide the international intensive care unit community in how to best treat those with severe COVID-19 symptoms.

"In January of this year members of this group began communicating with colleagues across the entire Asia-Pacific region when they noticed the spike of cases across Wuhan," Dr Rowan said.

"They worked tirelessly to create what was initially a study database and translated it into languages.

"They came together for one common purpose: to gather as much data as possible, creating a machine-learning tool that could give real-time advice to predict best treatment and create decision support mechanisms for clinicians across the globe.

"The ECMOCARD study that was born and originated in Queensland is now the largest database
of all critically ill patients requiring mechanical ventilation or life-sustaining artificial lung treatment."