How epidemics work
Epidemics were a part of Theme Hospital a lot of users founds very difficult and were often quite annoying. We will be adding epidemics to Corsix TH as of version 0.40. This document serves as a record of how epidemics are implemented and how players can deal with them.
An epidemic begins in later levels, beginning at level 6 when a contagious patient spawns. A contagious patient acts just like a regular patient but will silently infect other patients with their disease making them contagious too! Currently contagious patients are limited to non-visual diseases and may infect other patients with non-visual diseases as long as they are not fully diagnosed, when this happens the disease of the newly infected patient changes its disease to be the same as the patient who infected them.
You cannot tell who is contagious until any one contagious patient becomes 100% diagnosed. When this happens the epidemic is revealed to the player. You will receive a fax (pictured below) telling you which disease is contagious in your hospital and a how much a fine would be were you to declare your epidemic. The fine is relative to the number of contagious patients currently in your hospital.
You now have two choices:
- Declare the epidemic - this will make the epidemic go away immediately and you won't have to do anything else, but you will pay a fine as detailed on the fax and also a reputation hit
- Attempt a cover up - try and cure all the infected patients before the health inspector arrives - if the fine is large this might be a better option but the epidemic might get even worse!
Choosing the second option will start a cover up. Once you do this a timer will appear on the left of the screen. The timer is a countdown until the health inspector arrives, you need to try and cure all your contagious patients before he arrives. All of the contagious patients are marked with a green blob these are the ones you have to cure to succeeding in covering up an epidemic. Both the timer and contagious patients can be seen in the screenshot below.
The contagious patients can still infected other patients which may cause the epidemic to be even harder to cover up. To stop the disease spreading any further you can vaccinate the contagious patients. To do this you must left click on them. When this happens their green blob icon will change to be a green blob with a spray can, this means they are "marked" for vaccination. In the screenshot below you can see a contagious patient in the GP office is marked for vaccination whereas the lady sitting on the benches is not.
Once they are marked for vaccination you will need a nurse to come an vaccinate. You can speed this up by picking up a nurse and placing them near the contagious patient who is marked for vaccination. Once a nurse is near enough the patient they will be targeted for vaccination and the icon will change from the blob and spray can to a blob with a red arrow on it. Once this happens the nurse will walk to the patient and vaccinate them. If a patient is successfully vaccinated their icon will change to a blob with a flashing cross through it, a vaccinated patient cannot infect any other patients. You will need to vaccinate contagious patients to stop your epidemics spreading any further. Below on the left is a patient about to be vaccinated and the right after they have been successfully vaccinated.
Vaccination mode If you have a lot of infected patients to mark for vaccination you can enter vaccination mode. You do this by clicking the spray icon above the epidemic timer. Your cursor will change to a orange spray can. When vaccination mode is active you can click wherever you like in the hospital without anything happening, only when you hover over a contagious patient and click will it mark them for vaccination. This is useful for marking lots of patients without any other dialogs or distractions happening. Below you can see what the cursor looks like in vaccination mode.
Right clicking or clicking the icon on the timer again will disable vaccination mode and clicking behaviour will go back to normal.
You will lose an epidemic automatically if any infected patient is sent home or storms out of the hospital while the timer is still going. This is because the epidemic is leaked to the public and you have failed to cover it up, the health inspector will immediately come visit your hospital.
As long as this doesn't happen you can continue vaccinating your patients while there is still time left on the timer. This just stops the spread of the contagious diseases your goal is to cure all contagious patients.
When the timer expires the health inspector will start making his way to the hospital before he reaches the reception desk you can still try and cure the patients but you can no longer vaccinate any. Once at the reception desk the health inspector will make a decision based on how many people are still infected but not cured (this includes people you have vaccinated). Below you can see what the health inspector looks like - he uses the same model as a VIP but if you hover you mouse on him you can see he is the Health Inspector.
The decision the Health Inspector makes depends on how many patients are still infected. The outcome can be one of 4 things which will be explained in a fax you received:
- No patients are still infected - you will receive compensation of a random amount!
- A few patients are still infected - you will be fined a small amount depending on how many
- Moderately many are still infected - you will receive a larger fine and suffer some reputation loss.
- A large number are still infected - You will lose 1/3 of your total reputation and receive a fine and your hospital will be evacuated - this means all patients will leave your hospital without being cured. A picture of an evacuation can be seen below.
