LOS ANGELES (AP) – It’s crowded behind the ambulance.
Two emergency medical technicians, the patient, the stroller – and an unseen and unwanted passenger hiding in the air.
For EMTs Thomas Hoang and Joshua Hammond, the coronavirus is permanently close. COVID-19 became their biggest fear during the 24-hour shifts in Orange County, California, driving with them from 911 call to 911 call, from patient to patient.
They and other EMTs, paramedics and 911 dispatchers in Southern California were pushed to the front lines of the national pandemic epicenter. They fight to help those in need, while hospitals break out after a wave of patients after the holidays, ambulances are waiting outside hospitals for hours on end until beds become available, oxygen tanks are in alarmingly low quantities. and the launch of the vaccine was slow.
EMTs and paramedics have always dealt with life and death – making split-second decisions about patient care, which hospital to attend, the best and fastest way to save someone – and now they are just a breath away from becoming the patient themselves.
He dresses, masks and wears gloves, “but you can’t be so safe,” Hammond said. “We don’t have the luxury of being 6 meters away from the patient.”
Statistics on COVID-19 cases and deaths among EMTs and paramedics – especially those employed by private companies – are hard to find. They are considered essential health workers, but rarely receive the salaries and protections given to doctors and nurses.
Hammond and Hoang work for Emergency Ambulance Service Inc., a private ambulance company in Southern California. They, like many others, have long favored the goals of becoming the first responders to serve their communities.
Hoang is attending nursing school. Hammond is a long way from becoming a paramedic. Both were called to life in the medical field 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.
However, as COVID-19 infections increase and the risks increase, the question arises: Is it worth risking your life – and the lives of your loved ones at home – for a small salary and a dream?
“It’s very difficult to justify it beyond ‘I really want to help people,'” said Hammond, 25. “Is it worth the risk? ”
For now, yes.
“In a way, I want to do my part to help people improve,” said Hoang, 29.
And so their day begins at 7 in the morning
Wearing masks, Hoang and Hammond clean their ambulances and equipment, wiping every surface, even if the previous crew has already washed it. He takes no risks during the one-day shift that covers the city of Placentia in Orange County.
911 calls come with limited information: a broken bone, chest pain, shortness of breath, stomach pain, 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 EMTs arrive. At other times, the symptoms themselves – fever, shortness of breath – signal a possible case. But Hammond remembers a woman suffering from hip pain who did not tell him or his partner about her diagnosis of coronavirus.
He only found out afterwards, saying that he reinforced the importance of treating each patient as if he had tested positive.
“It was definitely a call where I learned a lot,” Hammond said.
Unlike doctors and nurses, the first to respond must enter homes. They enter hot areas where everyone in a household is sick, where the virus is in the air. He lifted the motionless patients by the mouth, their faces masked just inches away.
They run to hospitals already overwhelmed by sick people, sometimes just waiting for hours before the patient can be hospitalized. And then I do it again when the next 911 call comes in.
“We don’t know the end result,” Hoang said. “We only know the beginning of the hospital.”
Then there are those who direct 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, talking in headphones in clear, cut-out voices, organizing other ambulance crews around a stretch of land. to the mountains to the sea.
Ashley Cortez, Adreanna Moreno and Jaime Hopper work 12-hour shifts for Care Ambulance Service Inc. If EMT is the front line, these women are scouts.
He plays chess with ambulances all day. When one is stuck in the hospital for eight, 10 or 12 hours, the dispatchers have to reposition the others to cover their area. When an EMT reports a positive COVID-19 test, dispatchers must find a way to cover ambulance calls if the entire crew is to be quarantined. When a household has more than one coronavirus patient requiring two ambulances, dispatchers must close the hole.
Their biggest fear is what is called “zero level” – when there are no more ambulances to be sent in case of emergency. In Los Angeles County, one of the nation’s most affected counties during the pandemic, fear is becoming a common reality.
For Moreno, 28, the anxiety begins the night before her shift.
“I lay there and I know I will come in and I know I will not have units to make these calls,” she said.
Over the Christmas weekend, Cortez watched the call after call pile up on the screen – with no ambulances available. It usually takes 30 seconds to send one. That weekend, it lasted up to 15 minutes. And that was just before ambulances started disappearing out of hospitals for hours.
“I was just distrustful,” said Cortez, 26.
Dispatchers can’t do much more. He looks at these screens. Listen to radio conversations. They rearrange the crews to cover as much territory as possible. And one wonders what fresh horror awaits in a world devastated by the virus, where the dangers are too many and the ambulances are too few.
“What if something happens to my daughter,” Cortez said, “and there’s no one to send her after her?”