DALLAS (KRLD) - MedStar, the ambulance provider in Fort Worth and much of Tarrant County, says its paramedics are responding to an average of 77 calls each day for symptoms related to COVID-19. For each of those calls, 911 operators will ask additional questions to give paramedics, firefighters or police officers the best information possible.
When they are responding to a potential COVID-19 case, EMTs will wear personal protective equipment. MedStar says paramedics are using an average of 150 N-95 masks daily.
"Emergency medical services workers across the country and MedStar is no different, are truly those tip-of-the-spear healthcare workers," says MedStar's Matt Zavadsky.
Zavadsky says crews will ask the patient questions and may recommend not taking the person to the hospital. He says assessing the person's symptoms first can help preserve hospital capacity and also keep the patient from being exposed to others who might be in the emergency room who do test positive for COVID-19.
He says emergency response agencies are moving away from a "patient transport" response to 911 calls to a "patient navigation" response. Zavadsky says paramedics will recommend people who are stable and not critical do not go to the hospital.
"We never want to discourage people from calling 911, but we have to put processes in place to preserve the health care system's capacity," Zavadsky says.
Across the country, Zavadsky says 12,000 EMS workers have been exposed to coronavirus, 6,000 have been quarantined and 491 have been diagnosed with COVID-19; three have died.
"The EMS workers who are on the tip of the spear, out in the community, are really doing a phenomenal job and putting themselves at a rather significant risk," he says.
