HEMSI sees increased demand for emergency services

A lot of it due to coronavirus

And i'm will robinson-smith.

Today- as many people are enjoying their thanksgiving holiday- huntsville emergency medical serivcies is out on the road answering calls and transporting patients in need.

Waay 31's sydney martin is live at huntsville hospital this afternoon - after learning - they're seeing 10 percent more calls right now than they normally do this time of year..

Dan, will - hemsi ceo jon howell tells me ambulance workers aren't just bringing people to hospitals throughout madison county-- but because of the increase in cases causing hospitals to fill up they're also having to help shuffle patients to different hospitals that have available beds.

Jon howell, hemsi ceo, "at the beginning of the month we were probably running around 8 or 9 percent of our calls were treated as potential covid or covid positive and now we're somewhere between 15 and 20 percent."

Huntsville emergency medical service c-e-o jon howell explained to me not only is the number of people with coronavirus in the community rising, but so is the number of positive patients they have to take to the hospital... jon howell, hemsi ceo, "we also run into patients who have been given a positive covid diagnosis and they don't even share it with us until we arrive at the hospital and they tell us well this person tested positive yesterday."

Howell told me those exposures have impacted his staff... jon howell, hemsi ceo, "six people tested positive last week.

They're sick they're not in the hospital, thankfully.

But they are enduring the virus and symptoms that come with it."

"they are enduring the virus and symptoms that come with it.

We're tired too."

Currently, howell explained about twenty-three hundred people in madison county are in quarantine from being exposed to the virus or testing positive... jon howell, hemsi ceo, "about three weeks ago that number was less than 1000 so we've seen significant increase here in the last three weeks and we saw numbers in the five hundreds a month before that.

We've just seen a tremendous increase through october now into november."

And he hopes people in the community will do the right thing throughout the holiday season to stop the spread of the virus..

"this is a time where we need to pay close attention and we need to follow the public health measures and be very conservative with the number of times we get around a group of people and for thanksgiving im hoping people will understand the need celebrate thanksgiving this year either remotely, through electronic means or to plan for thanksgiving with family at a later time when it's safer."" howell told me starting next week they're planning on upping staffing and adding more ambulances to the streets to help spread out the calls each team of paramedics responds to.

Live in huntsville sm waay 31 news.