  During the current COVID-19 pandemic it is imperative to give early warnings
to reduce mortality. However, non-specialist such as authorities and the
general population face several problems to understand the real thread of this
pandemic, and under/overestimation of its risk are a commonplace in the press
and social media. Here we define an index, which we call the COVID-19 Burden
Index, that relates the capacities of the healthcare system of a given country
to treat severe and critical cases. Its value is 0 if there is no extra strain
in the healthcare system, and it reaches 1.0 when the collapse is imminent. As
of 23 March 2020, we show that Chile, the USA, UK, among other countries, must
reduce the rate of infections right now, otherwise, in less than 7 days they
could be in a catastrophic situation such as Italy, Spain and Iran.
