Magic Valley Paramedics have seen a massive increase in call volumes since the beginning of the pandemic.
“We’ve seen like a 30-40% increase in overall volume just in the last 12 months, comparing last year to this year, which is a lot,” said James Rhom of Magic Valley Paramedics. “We’re seeing a 300% increase in our respiratory complaint volume.”
Serving a population over 120,000 is already a large task for Rohm’s response team. Adding a pandemic in an area with dismal vaccination rates has forced his team to get creative.
“We have a specialty team, it’s a very small specialty team, that initially was put in place to help out with making connections in the community and helping out with some of the public health support,” Rhom said. “We have changed, or adapted, that team to the COVID response.”