Global and national inventory assessment of temporary housing for on-site isolation of essential workers during extreme pandemics

Extreme pandemics pose severe risks to the continuity of critical services, yet quantitative infrastructure assessments for essential-worker isolation remain largely absent. This paper presents the first global and national assessment of whether existing physical stocks could shelter isolated workers, estimating the availability of 17 temporary-housing categories and six basic-amenity types across 199 countries against the demand of 1.3 billion essential workers (EW) and 595 million vital workers (VW). Results are reported globally, assuming an open worldwide pool, and nationally, assuming no cross-border trade. A central deployability scenario was adopted as the planning basis. Under this scenario, with full international trade, the world could accommodate 45% of the VW population in high-quality temporary housing and provide all VW with basic amenities; a further 47% would rely on low-quality temporary housing such as converted vans and tents, while the remaining 8% could not be covered. Although full EW coverage is not attained in any housing or amenity category, with deficits of roughly 44% to 58%, a controlled sharing protocol with scheduled rotation and disinfection converts most amenity deficits to surpluses. In contrast, without international trade, only 41 of 199 countries (21%) could accommodate all VW with high-quality temporary housing alone, a further 61 (31%) could do so once low-quality housing is included, and 97 (49%) could not cover their VW under any combination of available stock. These findings show that current global stocks provide a reasonable foundation for protecting vital workers but leave substantial gaps in the absence of global trade, offering the first evidence base to guide national pandemic preparedness.