ReviewOpen access emergency medicine : OAEM2021
Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Calls During COVID-19: Early Lessons Learned for Systems Planning (A Narrative Review).
Review in Open access emergency medicine : OAEM, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 43 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
43 citing papers in PubMed, 84 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effectiveness of the community paramedicine at home (CP@home) program for frequent users of emergency medical services in Ontario: a randomized controlled trial.BMC health services research · 2024Trial
- A Retrospective Analysis of Nearly 3,000,000 Non-COVID-19 Mid- and High-Priority Ambulance Activations Before and During COVID-19: A National Study from Saudi Arabia.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Temporal Patterns of Alcohol- and Drug-Related Overdoses During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A National EMS-Based Study by Age and Gender in Israel.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2026Article
- Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Emergency Department Practices for Cardiopulmonary Symptoms.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Article
- Cardiorespiratory and Glycaemic Changes Following Prehospital Nebulised Salbutamol in Acute Asthma: A Mixed Retrospective and Prospective Observational Study.Journal of asthma and allergy · 2026Article
- Validation of Factors Associated with Difficult Emergency Transport in Tokyo Before and After COVID-19 Pandemic: A Retrospective Observational Study.Juntendo medical journal · 2026Article
- Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Prehospital Restraint Use and Sedation.American journal of preventive medicine · 2025Article
- A nationwide analysis of emergency medical services' responses during six waves of COVID-19.Journal of public health research · 2025Article
- Impact of COVID-19 pandemic phases on emergency medical services reaction times in Southern Poland.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Patterns of emergency dispatch calls and their changes during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.BMC emergency medicine · 2025Article
- National Evaluation of Emergency Medical Services Clinician Burnout and Workforce-Reducing Factors.Journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians open · 2025Article
- Paramedic educational programs maintain entry level competency throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.Journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians open · 2024Article
- Exploring the challenges of emergency medical service providers in the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic: a qualitative content analysis.BMC emergency medicine · 2024Article
- Population-Level Surveillance of Domestic Assaults in the Home Using the National Emergency Medical Services Information System (NEMSIS).Prevention science : the official journal of the Society for Prevention Research · 2024Article
- Drug Misuse Among Pediatric Patients: Encounters in the Prehospital Field.North Carolina medical journal · 2024Article
- Improving urban emergency medical service systems through brownfield transformation in Huangshi, China.Scientific reports · 2024Article
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- "Smart Emergency Call Point" Enhancing Emergency Medical Services on University Campuses.Prehospital and disaster medicine · 2024Article
- A National Study on the Comparative Burden of Pedestrian Injuries from Falls Relative to Pedestrian Injuries from Motor Vehicle Collisions.Journal of urban health : bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundOver the course of the COVID-19 progress, reports from many locations around the world indicated major increases in EMS call volume, which imposed great pressure on EMS dispatch centers (EMSDC) globally. No studies yet have been done to examine this phenomenon.
objectiveThis paper examines the interrelated effects of the unprecedented global increase of EMS call, the effect of the COVID-19 crisis on responding to non-COVID-19 emergencies, and the concurrent effects of having overwhelmed dispatch centers. It tries to explain the current evidence of the bottleneck of EMS calls during the early phase of the worldwide pandemic. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA: We examine the numbers of EMS calls internationally between March and June 2020, derived from published literature and news media. Only articles in English were selected, with certain keywords related to EMS calls, ambulance delay, stroke and cardiac arrest. SOURCE OF EVIDENCE: Google Scholar was the main searching source.
resultsAfter applying the selection criteria, a total of 29 citations were chosen, and a pattern of knowledge resulted in the emergence of five themes: EMS calls during COVID-19, Reduced EMS operator response time, Ambulance response delays, Collateral mortality and morbidity among non-COVID-19 cases, and Total ambulance call time.
conclusionOver the course of COVID-19 progress, there was a global phenomenon of exponential increases in EMS calls, which is expected to impose a great pressure on EMS dispatch centers. Several factors contributing to the bottleneck of EMS calls are identified and explained.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.