He explained that of course, Century couldn’t just shut down. “We had to respond to the threat immediately, but the information was new and we didn’t know what we were dealing with. If somebody says you have tuberculosis, we know exactly what we’re dealing with, but nobody really knew what COVID-19 was. It’s not the flu, it’s not pneumonia, it’s not TB; it’s COVID-19. What does that mean?”

The crews were concerned as well, asking what does that mean to me, what do I need to do to not only treat the patient but to also protect myself? Johnson acknowledged that everyone had questions, but added, “We tried to answer them as well as we could, but we were dealing with the same information they had at the very onset.” He emphasized Century Ambulance needed to make sure its crews knew what they were getting into and that they had the proper equipment to do their jobs. “Our commitment to them was that we weren’t going to put them on a truck or put them out there unless they had 100 percent of all gear they needed to do their job.”

In addition, the vehicles are always cleaned after a patient is transported, but Johnson said that foggers – a device that emits a mist inside the back of an ambulance to make sure it kills anything in the air – are now also used. “We fog the back of the ambulance to make sure that COVID-19 – or anything else – is not transmitted, because we move a lot of people in a day and we wanted to make sure we’re doing our part to contain it, as well to protect our crews and the next patient.” He said their system slowed down considerably with the amount of personal protective equipment the crews had to wear, the new decontamination processes, and also getting over fear of the unknown of what they were actually dealing with.

As for the calls themselves, Johnson said, “We did see a slowdown in areas where we actually do respond – where we’re the 911 provider – but the calls we did see were so much worse. People were delaying care because they didn’t want to go to the hospital; the doctors’ offices were doing everything remotely, which was a new product for a lot of people; as a result, some unfortunately delayed care they probably needed. So while we did see a slowdown in total call volume, the acuteness of those calls went up.”

Comparing those volumes with the current ones, Johnson said that now that everyone is emerging from the pandemic, the calls are at record numbers. “Now that everyone is out and about again, doing their thing – there are car accidents, heat exhaustion because they stay out on the golf course too long. Those types of incidents have definitely come back as well.”

Johnson said that while Century Ambulance does have a general pandemic plan on paper, “it’s like hurricane forecasting. It changes every day.” On the other hand, he pointed out that a hurricane is episodic – it comes in for two weeks, it’s chaotic, and then things return to normal. In the case of COVID-19, he believes it’s not known when and if things might actually return to normal.

“There are a lot of long-term effects that I think have yet to be discovered, especially with our crews. But just the fact that they were out there working, not for a short time but for a very long term, I think some things are probably going to continue to evolve, and hopefully we’ll be able to continue to meet those challenges for the staff.”

Johnson had high praise for Century Ambulance’s employees, saying they did a phenomenal job. “I can’t say enough about them. We had to tell them, ‘We’ve given you all the information we know, we’ve given you all the equipment the CDC has said you need to have; now we need you to do your job.’ And our employees did a phenomenal job.”