The Baltimore County Fire Department asks the community's help in easing the unprecedented strain that the latest COVID-19 surge has placed on the area's emergency medical services personnel, frontline responders and hospitals. COVID-19 infections continue to spread rapidly throughout Maryland and threaten to overwhelm frontline health care providers and our health care system as a whole. The growing number of hospitalizations has led to longer patient wait times in the area's hospital emergency departments and a shortage of available staffed beds in hospitals. Health care facilities must triage patients as they arrive to ensure the sickest receive treatment first. In some cases, patients with non-life-threatening emergencies may wait for extended periods, some exceeding 24 hours.