LOS ANGELES (AP): It is crowded at the back of the ambulance.
Two emergency medical technicians, the patient, the brush and an invisible and unwanted passenger hiding in the air.
For EMTs Thomas Hoang and Joshua Hammond, the coronavirus is constantly close. COVID-19 has become his biggest fear during 24-hour shifts in Orange County, California, with which they go from 911 to 911 calling, from patient to patient.
They and other EMTs, paramedics and 911 dispatchers in Southern California have been pushed to the front line of the national pandemic epicenter. They are dedicated to helping those in need, as hospitals bust a wave of patients after the holidays, ambulances are stuck waiting hours outside hospitals until beds are available, oxygen tanks are alarmingly in short supply, and the deployment of vaccines be slow.
EMTs and paramedics have always dealt with life and death: they make split-second decisions about patient care, which hospital they go to, the fastest and fastest way to save someone, and now only the there is a respite to become themselves. .
They dress, disguise and glove, “but you can only be so sure,” Hammond said. “We don’t have the luxury of being 6 feet away from the patient.”
It is difficult to find statistics on COVID-19 cases and deaths among EMTs and paramedics (especially those hired by private companies). They are considered essential health workers, but rarely receive the remuneration 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 so many others, have long fostered the goals of being the first lifeguards to serve their communities.
Hoang goes to nursing school. Hammond is on the verge of becoming a sanitary. 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 hit by a car .
Although as COVID-19 infections increase and the risks increase, they ask themselves: Is it worth risking your life (and the lives of your loved ones at home) to get a small salary and a dream?
“It’s very hard to justify it beyond ‘I really want to help people,'” Hammond, 25, said. Is it worth the risk? “
For now, yes.
“I want to do my part to help people improve, in a sense,” said Hoang, 29.
And so, his day begins at 7 in the morning
With masks, Hoang and Hammond clean the ambulance and equipment, cleaning all surfaces, even if the previous crew is already scrubbing it. They do not take risks during their day shift that covers the city of Placentia, in Orange County.
911 calls come with limited information: broken bones, chest pain, difficulty breathing, stomach ache, fever. All patients are potential carriers of the coronavirus, whether they know it or not.
Sometimes people know they are infected and alert 911 before the EMTs arrive. Other times, the same symptoms (fever, shortness of breath) indicate a possible case. But Hammond remembers a woman, who was suffering from hip pain, who did not tell him or his partner his diagnosis of coronavirus.
He only found out later, saying it reinforced the importance of treating all patients as if they had tested positive.
“It was definitely a call where we learned a lot,” Hammond said.
Unlike doctors and nurses, first assistants have to enter homes. They walk to hot areas where everyone in a household is sick, where the virus is in the air. They lift immobile patients to the gornelles, with the masked face a few inches away.
They run to hospitals already overflowing with sick people, sometimes just to wait hours outside so their patient can be admitted. And then they do it all again when the next 911 call arrives.
“We don’t know the end result,” Hoang said. “We only know the beginning of the hospital.”
Then there are those who direct EMTs to where to go. In Los Angeles County, 20 miles northwest of Hoang and Hammond, three young women stood in front of six screens recently, talking on headphones with clear, cut-out voices, in charge of getting other ambulance equipment to the around a territory that stretched from the mountains to the sea. .
Ashley Cortez, Adreanna Moreno and Jaime Hopper work 12-hour shifts as distributors for Care Ambulance Service Inc. If EMTs are the front line, these women are the scouts.
They play chess with ambulances all day. When one is trapped in a hospital for eight, 10 or 12 hours, dispatchers have to reposition the others to cover their area. When an EMT reports a positive test of COVID-19, dispatchers must find a way to cover ambulance calls if the entire crew is to be quarantined. When a home has several coronavirus patients who need two ambulances, dispensers must plug the hole.
His greatest fear is what is called “zero level”: when there are no ambulances left to send to an emergency. In Los Angeles County, one of the most affected counties in the nation during the pandemic, fear is becoming a common reality.
For Moreno, 28, the anxiety begins the night before his turn.
“I stayed there and I know I’ll get in, and I know I won’t have any units to make those calls,” he said.
On Christmas weekend, Cortez watched as call after call piled up on the screen, with no ambulances available. It usually takes 30 seconds to send one. That weekend, it took up to 15 minutes. And that was even before ambulances started languishing outside of hospitals for hours.
“He was incredulous,” Cortez, 26, said.
Dispatchers can’t do much more. Look at those screens. They listen to radio talks. They reorganize the crews to cover as much territory as possible. And they wonder what new 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 was no one to call her?”