LAFAYETTE, La. (KLFY)- The pandemic is keeping emergency medical responders busier these days.

The number of COVID-positive patients Acadian Ambulance is transporting has doubled in the last few months.

And each time, the ambulance crew is exposed. Roughly 10 percent of the employees at Acadian have been affected, including an RN field supervisor who responds to call every day.
“I had a little bit of a cough,” says paramedic RN Allen Jones.

That was a Monday in November after he returned from vacation. Jones suspected he had an upper respiratory infection.

His symptoms got worse throughout the week, but he was fever free until eight days after the cough started.
“She (my wife) touched my forehead and my face and she said you are burning up. We took my temperature and it was 104.5,” Jones said.
For the next few days, the typically active 53-year-old fought COVD-19 symptoms: nausea, dizziness, weakness, fever, diarrhea and extreme fatigue.  

He nearly ended up in the hospital when he was diagnosed with bilateral lower lobe pneumonia.
It affected his mental health as well.
“For somebody who’s so active going out all the time, the wife could start seeing the depression setting in,” Jones said.
Dr. Chuck Burnell is the medical director for Acadian Ambulance, and he explained the increased risk for EMS workers.

“We’ve been looking at the research based on number of deaths related to COVID and EMS compared to physicians have a five times higher death rate and three-time higher than the nursing staff and 20% higher than other first responders,” he explained.
Dr. Burnell says emergency medical responders are exposed at all points when they transport a COVID patient.
“We are in a closed environment almost all the time. We’re in these people’s homes which have droplets throughout the home,” he said. “We stay there on scene sometimes 15 to 20 minutes getting them loaded and packaged and family members are around us that may all so be COVID positive. we put them into a closed environment and head 20 or 30 minutes down the road. Then we get to the hospital.”

Jones’s family contracted COVID as well. His wife was sick for two days, his son for one. Meanwhile, Jones was out of work sick for a month.
He says it was a difficult road. “The mind wanted to do but the body said no.”

As of this week, 2,000 Acadian Ambulance employees have received the COVID vaccine. Dr. Burnell encourages people to get vaccinated and, more importantly, to wear a mask until the pandemic is over.