Istanbul's Paramedics Face Heightened Risk In Neighborhoods Hit Hard By Coronavirus

ISTANBUL, TURKEY - APRIL 30: EMT, Aziz Kilinc and paramedic Yigit Durdu from Turkey’s 112 Emergency Healthcare services (EHS) talk with family members before transferring a patient with COVID-19 symptoms to a hospital in the “red zone” district of Bahcelievler on April 30, 2020 in Istanbul, Turkey. Since the first reported Covid-19 case in Turkey on March 11, the 112 EHS has seen a rise in calls from 20,000 per day to between 35,000 and 40,000. The majority of Covid-19 cases in Turkey have been recorded in Istanbul. The city's 112 emergency healthcare services have been working around the clock, with more than 5000 EMT’s, paramedics and doctors based in 181 stations citywide. The EHS teams work in 24-hour shifts and wear full personal protective equipment (PPE) for every call. These teams are the first to respond when a Covid-19 case comes in and are responsible for entering a patient’s house and assessing the severity of the symptoms before treating them and transporting them to the nearest hospital. In the first months of the pandemic, EHS teams working in “red zone” neighborhoods with the highest number of positive cases were responding to twenty or more Covid-19 cases per day, sometimes as many as thirty. The number of cases has dropped in recent weeks, giving the crews some respite after months of intense shifts, but the risk of infection for frontline workers is still high. Turkey’s Health Minister Fahrettin Koca announced in an April 29 press conference that 7,428 health care workers have become infected since the start of the pandemic. As of May 5, Turkey has recorded 3,520 Coronavirus related deaths, 129,491 confirmed cases and 73,285 recovered patients. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)