In ambulances, an invisible, unwanted passenger: COVID-19

LOS ANGELES (AP) – It is busy in the back of the ambulance.

Two medical workers, the patient, the stretcher – and an invisible and unwanted passenger lurking in the air.

For EMTs Thomas Hoang and Joshua Hammond, the coronavirus is constantly close by. COVID-19 has become their biggest fear during 24-hour shifts in Orange County, California, taking them from 911 call to 911 call, patient to patient.

She and other Southern California paramedics, paramedics and emergency response team have been pushed into the front lines of the pandemic’s national epicenter. They do their best to help those in need as hospitals are bursting with a wave of patients after the holidays, ambulances wait outside hospitals for hours for beds to become available, oxygen tanks are alarmingly scarce and vaccine rollouts are slow.

Rescuers and paramedics have always faced life and death – making split-second decisions about patient care, which hospital to race to, the best and fastest way to rescue someone – and now they’re just a breath away removed from the patient.

They get dressed, mask themselves, and wear gloves, “but you can only be that safe,” Hammond said. “We don’t have the luxury of being six feet from the patient.”

Statistics on COVID-19 cases and deaths among EMTs and paramedics – especially those used by private companies – are hard to come by. They are considered essential health workers, but rarely receive the pay and protection that doctors and nurses receive.

Hammond and Hoang work for Emergency Ambulance Service Inc., a privately-owned Southern California ambulance company. They, like so many others, have long pursued the goals of becoming first responders to serve their community.

Hoang goes to nursing school. Hammond is one more test away from becoming a paramedic. Both were called to life in the medical profession after traumatic experiences: Hammond had to call 911 after his mother had an allergic reaction, and Hoang witnessed a young cyclist being hit by a car.

But as COVID-19 infections grow and the risks increase, they wonder, Is it worth it to risk your life – and that of your loved ones at home – for a small salary and a dream?

“It’s really hard to justify it outside of ‘I really want to help people,'” said Hammond, 25. “Is that worth the risk?”

For now, yes.

“I want to do my part to help people get better, in a way,” says Hoang, 29.

And so their day starts at 7am

Wearing masks, Hoang and Hammond clean their ambulance and equipment and sweep every surface, even if the previous crew was already scrubbing it. They don’t take any chances on their day shift in the Orange County town of Placentia.

The 911 calls come in with limited information: a broken bone, chest pain, difficulty breathing, stomach ache, fever. Every patient is a potential carrier of the coronavirus, whether they know it or not.

Sometimes people know they are infected and tell 911 dispatchers before the EMTs arrive. Other times, the symptoms themselves – fever, shortness of breath – indicate a possible case. But Hammond recalls a woman suffering from hip pain who did not tell him or his partner about her coronavirus diagnosis.

He only found out afterwards and said it reinforced the importance of treating each patient as if they had tested positive.

“That was certainly a phone call that we learned a lot from,” said Hammond.

Unlike doctors and nurses, first responders must go in. They walk into hot zones where everyone in a household is sick, where the virus is in the air. They lift motionless patients onto stretchers, their masked faces just inches apart.

They run to hospitals already overwhelmed by sick people, sometimes only to wait outside for hours before their patient can be admitted. And then they do it all again when the next 911 call comes in.

“We don’t know the end result,” said Hoang. “We only know the beginning of the hospital.”

Then there are the ones who send the EMTs where to go. In Los Angeles County, 20 miles northwest of Hoang and Hammond, three young women recently stood in front of six screens each, chatted in headsets with clear, clipped voices, and sent other paramedics around an area stretching from the mountains to the sea . .

Ashley Cortez, Adreanna Moreno and Jaime Hopper work 12-hour shifts as dispatchers for Care Ambulance Service Inc. If the EMTs are the front lines, these women are the scouts.

They play chess with ambulances all day long. If someone is detained in a hospital for eight, ten, or twelve hours, the dispatchers must move the others to cover the area. When an EMT reports a positive COVID-19 test, dispatchers must find a way to cover the ambulance calls if the entire crew needs to be quarantined. When a household has several coronavirus patients who need two ambulances, the coordinators have to close the gap.

Their greatest fear is what is called a “level zero” – when there are no more ambulances to send to an emergency. In Los Angeles County, one of the most affected counties in the country during the pandemic, fear is becoming a normal reality.

For Moreno, 28, fear begins the night before her shift.

“I’m laying there and I know I’ll come in, and I know I won’t have any units to make these calls,” she said.

Over Christmas weekend, Cortez watched call after call pile up on her screen – without ambulances. Usually it takes 30 seconds to send one. That weekend it took 15 minutes. And this was even before ambulances left the hospitals for hours on end.

“I was just in disbelief,” said Cortez, 26.

The dispatchers can’t do much more. They look at those screens. They listen to chatter on the radio. They rearrange the crews to cover as much territory as possible. And they wonder what new horror awaits in a virus-ridden world where the dangers are too great and the ambulances too few.

“What if something happens to my daughter,” Cortez said, “and there was no one to let her come?”