Add a hospital state and estimate the enlarged Q-matrix from the cohort. If infection starts in state , the expected hospital occupancy generated by one infection is the Markov reward model integral
Equivalently, if is the subgenerator on all transient states, is the entry of the fundamental matrix of an absorbing continuous-time Markov chain . The number infected in the population has expectation , so linearity of expectation gives total expected hospital use days. If only occupancy within a finite period counts, replace the upper integration limit by the remaining follow-up time for each infection and average over infection times.
For transition-intensity vector and generator , the expected infectious occupancy over three months from is the Markov reward model quantity
Insert the fitted intensities to obtain , evaluating the matrix exponential and integral numerically if necessary.
If has estimated covariance , calculate the numerical gradient at . The delta method gives estimated variance and the approximate confidence interval
Simulation from followed by transformation through gives a useful asymmetric alternative.