COVID-19

Many New Yorkers With COVID-19 Waited Too Long to Call 911. Why?

Ambulances are seen by Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx borough of New York City, April 20, 2020.
Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, thousands of New York City residents with symptoms of the disease it causes have called for ambulances, only to die before or just after the EMTs arrived, NBC News reported.

Experts and data suggest the reasons are linked to the patients' home addresses — but also to effects of the virus on the body that have come into better focus only after six weeks of deaths. Many patients probably didn't know how sick they really were.

NBC News reviewed data from Emergency Medical Services, the division of the city's fire department that handles 911 calls, showing that the number of cardiac calls — calls for patients whose hearts have stopped or are near death — has spiked since the beginning of the pandemic, as has the number of those calls that end in death. The surge is particularly noticeable in the city's poorest neighborhoods.

Get the full story here from NBC News.


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