LOS ANGELES (AP) – It is packed in the back of the ambulance.
Two emergency medical technicians, the patient, the stretcher – and an invisible and undesirable passenger lurking in the air.
For paramedics Thomas Hoang and Joshua Hammond, the coronavirus is constantly close. COVID-19 became their biggest fear during the 24-hour shifts in Orange County, California, traveling with them from 911 to 911, patient to patient.
They and other 911 paramedics, paramedics and dispatchers in Southern California were placed at the forefront of the national epicenter of the pandemic. They are struggling to help those in need, as hospitals explode with a wave of patients after the holidays, ambulances are stuck waiting outside hospitals for hours until beds are made available, oxygen tanks are alarmingly scarce and the vaccine has been slow to launch.
Paramedics and paramedics have always dealt with life and death – they make split-second decisions about patient care, which hospital to run to, the best and fastest way to save someone – and are now just a second away. become the patients themselves.
They dress, wear the mask and gloves, “but you can only be safe,” said Hammond. “We cannot afford to be 2 meters 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 considered essential health professionals, but rarely receive payment 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 cultivated goals to become the first to respond to serve their communities.
Hoang is attending nursing school. Hammond is on the verge of becoming a paramedic. Both were called to a 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 risks increase, they ask themselves: Is it worth risking your life – and the lives of your loved ones at home – for a small salary and a dream?
“It is very difficult to justify other than ‘I really want to help people,'” said Hammond, 25. “Is it worth the risk?”
So far yes.
“In a way, I want to do my part by helping people to improve,” said Hoang, 29.
And then their day starts at 7am
Wearing masks, Hoang and Hammond clean the ambulance and equipment, cleaning all surfaces, even if the previous team has already scrubbed. They take no chances during their one-day shift covering the city of Placentia in Orange County.
Calls to 911 come with limited information: a broken bone, chest pain, difficulty breathing, stomach pain, fever. Every patient is a potential coronavirus carrier, 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, suffering from hip pain, who did not tell him or her partner about the diagnosis of coronavirus.
He only found out later, saying that this reinforced the importance of treating each patient as if the test was positive.
“This was definitely a call from which we learned a lot,” said Hammond.
Unlike doctors and nurses, first aid must enter the home. They enter hot areas where everyone in a home is sick, where the virus is in the air. They place immobile patients on stretchers, their faces masked just inches away.
They rush to hospitals already packed with sick people, sometimes just to wait hours outside before their patient can be admitted. And then they do it all over again when the next 911 call arrives.
“We don’t know the end result,” said Hoang. “We only know the beginning of the hospital.”
Then there are those who direct paramedics where to go. In Los Angeles County, 20 miles northwest of Hoang and Hammond, three young men stood before six screens each recently, speaking in headphones with crisp, clipped voices, organizing other ambulance crews in a territory that stretches from 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 the front line, these women are scouts.
They play chess with ambulances all day. When one is stuck 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 be quarantined. When a home has several coronavirus patients requiring two ambulances, dispatchers must plug the hole.
Their biggest fear is what is called “zero level” – 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 becomes a regular reality.
For Moreno, 28, the anxiety starts the night before the shift.
“I stay there and I know I’m going to get in, and I know I won’t have units to make these calls,” she said.
On Christmas weekend, Cortez watched a series of calls pile up on his screen – with no ambulances available. It usually takes 30 seconds to send one. That weekend, it took up to 15 minutes. And that was before ambulances even started to languish outside hospitals for hours.
“I just couldn’t believe it,” said Cortez, 26.
There is not much more that dispatchers can do. They watch these screens. They listen to radio conversations. They reorganize the crews to cover as much territory as possible. And they wonder what new horror awaits them in a world ravaged by viruses, where the dangers are many and ambulances are few.
“What if something happens to my daughter,” said Cortez, “and there is no one to send for her?”