Characteristics of changes in the demand for emergency medical services due to epidemics of sudden acute respiratory infectious diseases—Data analysis of pre hospital first aid during the period of optimizing the implementation of COVID-19 prevention and control measures in Zhejiang Province / 中华急诊医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To study characteristics of changes in the demand for emergency medical services during epidemic prevention and control "10 new measures" in Zhejiang province.Methods:The data of 26 emergency centers connected to the provincial integration platform of Zhejiang Province (hereinafter referred to as "provincial platform" ) were retrospectively analyzed, and the data were collected from one week before the implementation of "10 new measures" to the sixth week after implementation (December 1, 2022 to January 18, 2023). The collected information included: the number of 120 calls and ambulance services, the types of disease, age composition of patients, performance of emergency medical services.Results:From the second week of the implementation of "10 new measures" (December 15 to 21, 2022), the number of 120 calls and ambulance services were increased rapidly, and the peak occurred in the third week of implementation (December 21 to 28, 2022). Among the types of diseases, the number and proportion of patients with abnormal symptoms and respiratory diseases increased significantly, reaching the highest peak in the third week (December 21 to 28, 2022) and the fourth week (December 29, 2022 to January 4, 2023) of implementation, respectively. After the second week of implementation, the number of elderly patients aged 71 to 100 increased significantly, reaching a peak in the fourth week (December 29, 2022 to January 4, 2023), accounting for 60.76% of the total. During the epidemic period, the quality control indicators such as emergency dispatch time, ambulance dispatch time and medical treatment all fluctuated, but the changes were not significant.Conclusions:During the implementation of epidemic prevention and control "10 new measures", there were obvious characteristic changes in the demand for pre-hospital emergency in Zhejiang Province, but the quality of pre-hospital emergency medical was basically stable.