FORT WORTH, Texas — The holiday season is typically busy for MedStar paramedics in Tarrant County. But this year, it’s for a different reason.
“Yesterday, MedStar crews treated 115 patients that they indicated were likely coronavirus positive,” spokesman Matt Zavadsky said. “That is a record number.”
Zavadsky explained those numbers are based on symptoms, physical assessments and health history.
“Generally, during the month of November, we were averaging about 85 cases per day,” Zavadsky said. “Seeing a spike to 115 in one day, with 98 of them sick enough to need to go to the hospital, is a very concerning trend for us.”
It coincides with what the county’s public health department is seeing, too.
“It just took us six days to add 10,000 cases,” director Vinny Taneja told county commissioners Tuesday. “That's the fastest we've ever seen.”
He went on to talk about hospitalizations and ICU bed capacity.
“We have 18 ICU beds remaining, according to the latest report. So just for consideration, if we're a county of almost 2.1 million people, 18 ICU beds remain. That's one traffic accident, a building fire," said Taneja.
Taneja also reported 13 more COVID-19 deaths Tuesday, bringing the total amount of people who’ve died from COVID-19 to nearly 900, he said.
“The fear is that, as everyone predicted, the Thanksgiving holiday has resulted in a significant spike in coronavirus cases,” Zavadsky said. “We've got dramatically increasing call volume, we've got patients who are very sick.”
And he said they have paramedics who are stretched thin; paramedics who are trying to protect themselves as well.
“If this continues, we get very busy around the holidays. You have that normal busy call volume plus the coronavirus cases, it's going to be a very difficult holiday season for the EMS providers," said Zavadsky.
And, they worry, for the community as a whole.