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San Bernardino County emergency dispatchers have stopped sending an ambulance on all 911 calls, a strategy that lightens their load as coronavirus-related calls increase.
Instead, people whose symptoms appear compatible with COVID-19 or the flu but who do not appear to need hospitalization are visited by non-ambulance paramedics, said Steve Tracy, a spokesperson for the San Bernardino County Fire Department.
The new policy began on Friday afternoon, Nov. 27, he said.
“We’re only a few days away, but there is already 52% reduction in transport, which is really helping hospitals,” Tracy said Monday, November 30.
Riverside County has a similar plan ready but has not implemented it, Bruce Barton, chief of the county’s emergency management department, said on Monday.
Before the new San Bernardino County policy began, some ambulances waited four to six hours in a hospital before they could release a patient, Tracy said.
“This ambulance is tied up,” he said. “He cannot respond to other emergencies.”
There has been no noticeable change in the speed with which ambulances respond to calls, he said.
Paramedics continue to fully assess anyone who calls 911. They advise people to take action, including visiting emergency care facilities or contacting their doctor or nurse, and leaving information on the call. way to do it, said Tracy. They also tell people to call 911 again if their condition worsens.
Tracy advises people to check themselves before calling 911 to avoid breaking into the ambulances.
“If your symptoms indicate that you are sick or have flu-like symptoms, we want you to call your doctor first and have your doctor help you make a decision,” he said. “Of course, if you are short of breath or have other emergency symptoms, call 911.”
Coronavirus hospitalizations in San Bernardino County have broken records in recent days, with 856 people hospitalized with a confirmed case of COVID-19 on Monday. The number of people hospitalized for COVID-19 in the county has increased by at least 50 in a single day five times since November 20, with the largest increase before that being 36 people in July.
Officials at hospitals in the interior said they were “exploding at the top of their lungs” and expected the numbers to worsen.
In Riverside County, Barton noted last week that ambulance and hospital use in Riverside County was lower in the worst recent flu year – December 2017 to January 2018 – but said hospitalizations with COVID- 19 were more labor-intensive and that the pandemic had already lasted much longer than an influenza season.
Riverside County on Monday set a record for confirmed COVID-19 patients in hospital beds: 600. That number is up 43% from the previous week. The worst before that was 550 in July.
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