Instead, people whose symptoms appear consistent with COVID-19 or the flu but who do not appear to need hospitalization are being visited by paramedics without an ambulance, said Steve Tracy, a spokesman for the San Bernardino County Fire Department.
“We’re only a couple days into it, but there’s already 52% reduction in transports, which is really helping the hospitals,” Tracy said Monday, Nov.
Riverside County has a similar plan ready but has not implemented it, Bruce Barton, head of the county’s emergency management department, said Monday.
San Bernardino County coronavirus hospitalizations have broken records each of the past several days, with 856 people hospitalized with a confirmed case of COVID-19 as of Monday.
The number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 in the county has jumped by at least 50 in a single day five times since Nov.
In Riverside County, Barton noted last week that ambulance and hospital use in Riverside County was below the worst recent flu year — December 2017 to January 2018 — but said COVID-19 hospitalizations are more labor-intensive and the pandemic has already lasted far longer than a flu season.
Riverside County set a record Monday for confirmed COVID-19 patients in hospital beds: 600.
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