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LOS ANGELES (AP) – There are people in the back of the ambulance.
Two emergency medical technicians, the patient, the stretcher – and an invisible and unwanted passenger lurk in the air.
For EMTs Thomas Hoang and Joshua Hammond, the coronavirus is constantly near. COVID-19 has become their biggest fear during 24-hour shifts in Orange County, California, going from 911 call to 911 call, patient to patient with them.
They and other paramedics, paramedics and 911 dispatchers in Southern California have been placed on the front lines of the national epicenter of the pandemic. They scramble to help those in need as hospitals swarm with patients after the holidays, ambulances are stuck waiting outside hospitals for hours on end until beds become available, reservoirs of oxygen levels are alarmingly high and vaccine deployment has been slow.
Paramedics and paramedics have always faced life and death – they make split-second decisions about patient care, which hospital to rush to, the best and fastest way to save someone. ‘a – and now they’re just one breath away from becoming the patient themselves. .
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They dress, mask themselves and wear gloves, “but you can’t be that sure,” Hammond said. “We don’t have the luxury of being 6 feet away from the patient.”
Statistics on COVID-19 cases and deaths among paramedics and paramedics – especially those employed by private companies – are hard to come by. They are seen as essential health workers but seldom receive the salaries and protections afforded to doctors and nurses.
Hammond and Hoang work for Emergency Ambulance Service Inc., a private ambulance company in Southern California. Like so many others, they have long had a goal of becoming the first responders to serve their communities.
Hoang attends nursing school. Hammond is on a test before becoming a paramedic. Both were called to live in the medical field after traumatic experiences: Hammond had to call 911 after his mother had an allergic reaction, and Hoang saw a young cyclist get hit by a car.
Yet, as COVID-19 infections rise and risks increase, they wonder: is it worth risking your life – and the lives of your loved ones back home – for a small salary and a dream?
“It’s really hard to justify it beyond ‘I really want to help people’,” said Hammond, 25. “Is it worth the risk?”
For now yes.
“I want to do my part to help people improve themselves, in a way,” said Hoang, 29.
And so their day starts at 7 a.m.
Wearing masks, Hoang and Hammond clean their ambulance and equipment, wiping down all surfaces even though the previous crew has already cleaned them. They don’t take any risks during their work day in the Orange County town of Placentia.
911 calls arrive 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 notify 911 dispatchers before paramedics arrive. Other times, the symptoms themselves – fever, shortness of breath – signal a possible case. But Hammond remembers a woman, with pain in her hip, who has not spoken to him or her partner about her coronavirus diagnosis.
He only found out afterwards, saying it reinforced the importance of treating every patient as if they had tested positive.
“It was definitely a call where we learned a lot,” Hammond said.
Unlike doctors and nurses, first responders must get inside homes. They walk in hot areas where everyone in a household is sick, where the virus is in the air. They lift patients motionless on gurneys, their masked faces a few inches apart.
They run to hospitals already overwhelmed with sick people, sometimes only to wait hours outside before their patient can be admitted. And then they start over when the next 911 call comes.
“We don’t know the end result,” Hoang said. “We only know the beginning of the hospital.”
Then there are those who direct 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, speaking in headsets with clear, muted voices, rallying other ambulance teams around a territory that stretches 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 paramedics are on the front line, these women are the Girl Scouts.
They play chess with ambulances all day. When someone is stranded in the hospital for eight, 10 or 12 hours, dispatchers must 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 needs to quarantine. When a household has multiple coronavirus patients requiring two ambulances, dispatchers need to plug the hole.
Their biggest fear is what is called a “level zero” – when there are no more ambulances to send in an emergency. In Los Angeles County, one of the counties hardest hit by the pandemic, fear is becoming a regular reality.
For Moreno, 28, the anxiety begins the night before his shift.
“I’ve stood there and I know I’m going to come in, and I know I’m not going to have units to run these calls,” she said.
Over Christmas weekend, Cortez watched call after call pile up on his screen – with no ambulances available. Typically, it takes 30 seconds to send one. This weekend it took up to 15 minutes. And that was before ambulances even began to languish outside hospitals for hours.
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“I was just in disbelief,” Cortez, 26, said.
There isn’t much more that dispatchers can do. They look at these screens. They listen to the radio chatter. They reorganize the crews to cover as much territory as possible. And they wonder what new horror awaits in a virus-ravaged world where dangers are too many and ambulances too few.
“What if something happens to my daughter,” Cortez said, “and there was no one to send for her?”
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