I still advised them against self-quarantine. I understand it is a choice they made but many lives can be saved if these patients are quarantined at temporary hospitals.
N.Y.C.’s 911 System Is Overwhelmed. ‘I’m Terrified,’ a Paramedic Says.
With coronavirus cases mounting, emergency workers are making life-or-death decisions about who goes to a hospital, and who is left behind.
The first of many calls that night involved a 24-year-old man who had a fever, body aches and a cough that sounded like a cement mixer.
While the Brooklyn paramedics took the man’s fever — 103 degrees — they noticed frightening vitals that hinted at coronavirus: a critically low level of oxygen was flowing into his otherwise clear lungs, while his heart thumped with the intensity of a marathon runner’s. He was taken to the nearest hospital.
Then almost immediately came the next call: a 73-year-old man with symptoms similar to the young man’s. They took him to the hospital, too.
“It’s all a war zone,” one of the paramedics said.
Days later, another paramedic, Phil Suarez, was dispatched to two homes in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood, where entire families, living in cramped apartments, appeared to be stricken with the virus.
“I’m terrified,” said Mr. Suarez, who has been a paramedic in New York City for 26 years and had assisted in rescue efforts during the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and later served in the Iraq war. “I honestly don’t know if I’m going to survive. I’m terrified of what I’ve already possibly brought home.”
Even as hospitals across New York become inundated with coronavirus cases, some patients are being left behind in their homes because the health care system cannot handle them all, according to dozens of interviews with paramedics, New York Fire Department officials and union representatives, as well as city data.
In a matter of days, the city’s 911 system has been overwhelmed by calls for medical distress apparently related to the virus. Typically, the system sees about 4,000 Emergency Medical Services calls a day.
On Thursday, dispatchers took more than 7,000 calls — a volume not seen since the Sept. 11 attacks. The record for amount of calls in a day was broken three times in the last week.
Because of the volume, emergency medical workers are making life-or-death decisions about who is sick enough to take to crowded emergency rooms and who appears well enough to leave behind. They are assessing on scene which patients should receive time-consuming measures like CPR and intubation, and which patients are too far gone to save.
And, they are doing it, in most cases they say,
.
The paramedics described grim scenes as New York City has become the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States,
, and 672 deaths.
If the rate of growth in cases in the New York area continues,
in Wuhan, China, or the Lombardy region of Italy.
One New York City paramedic described responding to a suicide attempt of a woman who had drank a liter of vodka after her cancer treatments had been delayed, in part because hospitals were clearing their beds for coronavirus patients.
Another paramedic said she responded to so many cardiac arrests in one shift that the battery on her defibrillator died.
“It does not matter where you are. It doesn’t matter how much money you have. This virus is treating everyone equally,” the Brooklyn paramedic said.
The amount of work has been record-setting for the city’s 911 system, said Frank Dwyer, a Fire Department spokesman.
“Our E.M.T.s and paramedics are on the front line during an unprecedented time in the department’s history,” Mr. Dwyer said, adding: “They’re doing it professionally, and they’re doing it because they care about their patients. They care about this city.”
The department said it has started rationing protective gear in an attempt to stave off potential shortages. Earlier this month, the department told workers that they must turn in their used N95 masks — which filter out 95 percent of airborne particles when used correctly — in order to receive a new one.
“The department is carefully managing and monitoring usage of personal protective equipment and critical supplies to ensure we have what’s needed for this long-term operation,” Mr. Dwyer said.
Inside ambulances, on rudimentary digital screens, the dispatches are listed — call No. 2,488, sick; call No. 2,555, sick; call No. 2,894, sick with a fever. The screen goes on for rows, a catalog of the city’s ill and dying. Peppered among them are the usual every day calls still demanding attention: injuries, accidents, heart attacks.
New York City’s soundtrack has always included the sound of ambulance sirens. But now, with many of the city’s businesses closed and its neighborhoods quiet, endless wailing seems to echo through the deserted streets.
Three weeks ago, the paramedics said, most coronavirus calls were for respiratory distress or fever. Now the same types of patients, after having been sent home from the hospital, are experiencing organ failure and cardiac arrest.
“We’re getting them at the point where they’re starting to decompensate,” said the Brooklyn paramedic, who is employed by the Fire Department. “The way that it wreaks havoc in the body is almost flying in the face of everything that we know.”