CNN Source Article | Comments Courtesy of Matt Zavadsky

Further national recognition of the amazing job EMS providers, provider agencies, and the entire healthcare system is doing around the country! 

We are very thankful for our heroes managing this crisis!

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Los Angeles ambulance ride-along shows the pandemic's grueling toll on EMTs

By Josh Campbell, Jack Hannah and Eric Levenson, CNN

Mon January 11, 2021

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/11/us/los-angeles-ambulance-emt-coronavirus/index.html

(CNN)  EMT Sadi Pope takes pride in her job, but the recent Covid-19 surge in Los Angeles County has made for some grueling 10-hour shifts.

The mother of three and former stay-at-home mom has been running an ambulance for the last six months, but the call volume has grown so much in this latest wave of the coronavirus pandemic that "we're running and running" all day now, she said.

"A few months ago, there would be times where we'd sit for a couple hours just waiting for a call in our area, but now ... we're lucky if we sit for a half an hour," she said.

To understand how Los Angeles' crushing Covid-19 surge has impacted first-responders, CNN spent a day with EMTs and at the emergency communication hub for Care Ambulance, the largest emergency ambulance service in Southern California. Over nearly eight hours, the group of hard-working yet harried workers tried to handle a large volume of calls and brought sick patients to hospitals so full that the patients were left waiting for hours for an available bed.

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