(O-B6) An Analysis of Emergency Medical Services Responses During Six Waves of COVID-19: A National Study from Israel

Friday, September 8, 2023

9:00 AM - 9:12 AM EEST

Location: Elafos B

Oral Presenter / Primary Author(s)

EA

Evan Avraham Alpert, MD (he/him/his)

Attending Physician
Hadassah Medical Center- Ein Kerem
Modiin, HaMerkaz, Israel

Co-Author(s)

BE

Bezalel Eliav, MD

Physician
Shaare Zedek Medical Center
Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel
MN

Maximilian Nerlander, MD

Physician
Karolinska Institute
Stockholm, Stockholms Lan, Sweden
RS

Roman Sonkin, MD

Physician
Soroka Medical Center
Beer Sheba, Israel
AL

Ari M. Lipsky, MD

Physician
Afula Medical Center
Zichron Yaakov, HaZafon, Israel

Principal Investigator(s)

EJ

Eli Jaffe, PhD

Deputy Director
Magen David Adom
Modiin, HaMerkaz, Israel

Objectives: The objective of this study was to investigate how the prehospital response by the Israeli national EMS system (Magen David Adom, MDA) was affected by the first six waves of COVID-19.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant effects on health systems worldwide in general, and on emergency medical systems (EMS) in particular. While there is literature looking at the effect of the initial wave of COVID-19 on EMS, there is a paucity of studies analyzing all of the waves to date.

Methods: This was a retrospective study using the command-and-control database of MDA from January 1, 2020 through July 31, 2022. EMS responses from each of the six waves of COVID-19 were compared to a historic control period using a 7-day moving average.

Results: A total of 1,242,225 EMS responses were included in the study. During the first wave, there was a relative increase in daily responses to cases of fever (83.1 vs 40.3; p < 0.05) and respiratory symptoms (177.0 vs 151.7; p < 0.05). but a decrease in the total number of daily responses, especially for major trauma (78.3 vs 100.4; p < 0.05) and motor vehicle accidents (MVA) (44.4 vs 104.4; p < 0.05). In the second wave, there was a similar trend. In the third wave, there were no statistically significant differences in responses to respiratory complaints, cardiac complaints, or major trauma. During the fourth, fifth, and sixth waves, there were statistically significant increases for all types of responses compared to the control periods. (Table 1)

Conclusions: During the first two waves of COVID-19, there was an increase in responses for fever and respiratory symptoms and a decrease in responses for major trauma and MVA, with the latter probably due to lockdowns limiting movement. In the subsequent waves, a gradual return to the trend of an overall increase in the number of responses over time compared to the control period was observed which may be due to the introduction of vaccinations.

References (Optional):

Funding (Optional): None