ArticleBMC emergency medicine2023
Not only COVID-19 disease impacts ambulance emergency demands but also lockdowns and quarantines.
Article in BMC emergency medicine, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- 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
- Observational
- Bracing for the next wave: A critical incident study of frontline decision-making, adaptation and learning in ambulance care during COVID-19.Journal of advanced nursing · 2025Article
- Patients' use of Danish emergency medical services before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: a register-based study.Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine · 2024Article
- Reshaping Emergency Care: Dynamics of OHCA and STEMI in a Three-Year Analysis.Epidemiologia (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Hong Kong: Registry-Based Study From 2017 to 2023.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2024Article
- [Impact of the 2020 lockdown on prehospital psychiatric emergencies in a large city].Die Anaesthesiologie · 2024Article
- Health Outcomes for Older Patients with Chronic Diseases During the First Pandemic Year.Clinical interventions in aging · 2024Observational
- Use of health services and medication use, new comorbidities, and mortality in patients with chronic diseases who did not contract COVID-19 during the first year of the pandemic: a retrospective study and comparison by sex.BMC health services research · 2023Observational
- Contribution of Live Video to Physicians' Remote Assessment of Suspected COVID-19 Patients in an Emergency Medical Communication Centre: A Retrospective Study and Web-Based Survey.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe pandemic has impacted both patients infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus and patients who seek emergency assistance due to other health issues. Changes in emergency demands are expected to have occurred during the pandemic, the objective of this investigation is to characterize the changes in ambulance emergency demands during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Vaud State of Switzerland. The goal of this research is to identify the collateral effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on emergency demands. To do so, this study quantifies the differences in health issues, level of severity, and patients' sociodemographic characteristics (age, location, gender) prior to and during the outbreak.
methodThis is a retrospective, descriptive and comparative statistical analysis of all ambulance emergency missions from 2018 to 2020 (n = 107,150) in the State of Vaud in Switzerland. Variables analyzed were the number of ambulance missions, patient age and gender, health issues, severity (NACA scores), number of non-transports, mission times and locations. Variables were compared between prepandemic and pandemic situations across years and months. Comparative analysis used bivariate analysis, χ2 test, Student's t test, and Mann‒Whitney U test.
resultsThe pandemic has had two major impacts on the population's emergency demands. The first appears to be due to COVID-19, with an increase in respiratory distress cases that doubled in November 2020. The second relates to the implementation of lockdown and quarantine measures for the population and the closures of restaurants and bars. These might explain the decrease in both the number of traumas and intoxications, reaching more than 25% and 28%, respectively. An increase in prehospital emergency demands by the older population, which accounted for 53% of all demands in 2020, is measured.
conclusionCollateral effects occurred during 2020 and were not only due to the pandemic but also due to protective measures deployed relative to the population. This work suggests that more targeted reflections and interventions concerning the most vulnerable group, the population of people 65 and older, should be of high priority. Gaining generalizable knowledge from the COVID-19 pandemic in prehospital settings is critical for the management of future pandemics or other unexpected disasters.
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