Demographic and Clinical Characteristics of COVID-19 Cases at the 112 Emergency Call Centers in İstanbul

Objective: The study aims to present calls received at the 112 Emergency Calls Centers in İstanbul. Algorithms were applied to analyze the demographic and clinical characteristics of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) cases.
Material and Methods: Incoming calls at the 112 Emergency Call Centers of the European and Anatolian regions of the metropolitan city of İstanbul were assessed. In the retrospective study, the period under investigation was from March 11 to May 1 of 2020.
Results: Patients with suspected severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 pneumonia (n=35,443) were analyzed. The mean age of the patients was found to be 50.6±22.3. Of this total, 16,902 (47.7%) cases were female. Ambulance response times for these cases were reported as 10.2 (7.0-16.3) minutes. In terms of clinical symptoms, 18,958 (53.50%) of the cases had fever, 18,359 (51.86%) had a cough, and 21,121 (59.60%) had shortness of breath. The district with the highest number of cases was Gaziosmanpasa with 1,256 cases, 42.16 people per square meter.
Conclusion: Prehospital health services are an important link in the chain of survival. Ambulance services act as a bridge between individuals in the community and hospital care services in cases of disasters such as earthquakes, floods, pandemics. The structural establishment of a robust system to meet the incoming demands, the construction of applicable algorithms, building the optimal infrastructure for ambulances in accordance with the population intensity, will both protect the system and help to improve the quality of health services delivery.

Keywords: Command and control centers, prehospital health services, ambulance, pandemic, SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 pneumonia