How Epidemics Work
Epidemics were a part of Theme Hospital a lot of players found very difficult and often quite annoying. Epidemics were added to CorsixTH in version 0.40. This document serves as a record of how epidemics are implemented and how players can deal with them.
Epidemics are introduced in Level 6 and begin whenever 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 how much you will be fined if you 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 your reputation will be reduced.
- 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 could get even worse!
Choosing the second option will start a cover up. Once the fax message closes, a timer will appear near the bottom-left corner of the screen. This timer is a countdown until the Health Inspector arrives at your hospital, and you will need to cure all contagious patients before he does. All contagious patients are marked with a green blob icon and when you cover the cursor over them, the phrase "I am contagious" can be seen in the Dynamic Information Bar. These are the patients who must be cured for a successful cover up. Both the timer and contagious patients can be seen in the screenshot below.
Contagious patients can still infect other patients, which can make it even harder to cover up the epidemic. To stop the epidemic from spreading further, you will need to vaccinate 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 has been marked for vaccination, whereas the female patient sitting on the bench has not.
Once a patient has been marked for vaccination, you will need a Nurse to perform the vaccination itself. Once a Nurse is near enough to the patient, they will be targeted for vaccination and the icon above their head will change from a blob with a spray can to a blob with a red arrow. Once this happens, the Nurse will walk up to the patient and vaccinate them. You can speed this process up by picking up a Nurse and placing them near the contagious patient who is marked for vaccination. After a patient has been vaccinated, their icon will change to a blob with a flashing cross through it and when you hover the cursor over them, the phrase "I am no longer contagious" appears in the Dynamic Information Bar. A vaccinated patient cannot infect any other patients. In the below screenshot, the left shows a patient who is about to be vaccinated by a Nurse and the right shows after they have been vaccinated.
If you have a lot of infected patients to mark for vaccination, you can enter Vaccination mode 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. When you left-click on a contagious patient, you will mark them for vaccination. This is useful for quickly marking lots of contagious patients without any other dialogs or distractions happening. Right-clicking or clicking the icon on the timer again will disable Vaccination mode and clicking behaviour will go back to normal. Below you can see what the cursor looks like in Vaccination mode.
You can continue vaccinating your patients while the timer is still running. However, vaccination will only stop the spread of the contagious disease - your goal is to cure all contagious patients.
The timer will automatically expire if any infected patient is sent home or storms out of the hospital before they have been cured. This is because the epidemic has leaked to the public and you have failed to cover it up. The Health Inspector will immediately come to visit your hospital.
Once the timer has expired, the Health Inspector will start making his way to your hospital. Before he reaches the reception desk, you can still try and cure all remaining infected patients, but you can no longer vaccinate them. Once at the reception desk, the Health Inspector will make a decision based on how many patients in your hospital are still infected but not cured (this includes patients that have been vaccinated). Below you can see what the Health Inspector looks like - he uses the same model as a VIP, but if you hover your cursor over him, the Dynamic Info Bar will indicate that he is the Health Inspector.
The Health Inspector's decision depends on how many patients are still infected in your hospital. There are four possible outcomes, which will be revealed in a fax message:
- 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 uncured patients are still in your hospital.
- A moderate number of patients are still infected - You will receive a large fine and suffer some reputation loss.
- A large number of patients are still infected - You will lose one-third of your total reputation, receive a fine, and your hospital will be evacuated. This means that all patients will immediately leave without being cured. A picture of an evacuation can be seen below.
