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

EMT, Ahmet Akdag, paramedic, Abdulaziz Yuksel and paramedic Bahar Polat from Turkey’s 112 Emergency Healthcare services (EHS) tend to a COVID-19 positive patient at his home in the “red zone” district of Bahcelievler on May 02, 2020. Since the start of the Coronavirus outbreak in Turkey on March 11, 2020, the 112 EHS has seen a rise in calls from the normal 20,000 a day to between 35,000 and 40,000. The majority of COVID-19 cases in Turkey have been recorded in Istanbul. Istanbul’s 112 Emergency Healthcare services have been working around the clock since the start of the pandemic. With more than 5000 EMT’s, paramedics and doctors working out of 181 stations citywide. The EHS teams have been on the frontline, working in 24hr shifts and wearing full personal protective equipment for every call-out, the teams are the first responders 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” districts of Istanbul, those neighborhoods with the highest number of positive cases, were responding to twenty or more COVID cases a day, sometimes as many as thirty. However, as the number of positive cases has been dropping over the past two weeks there has also been a decline in calls to the 112-hotline giving the crews some respite after months of intense shifts. The risk of infection for frontline workers is high with Turkey’s Health Minister Fahrettin Koc announcing 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. (Footage by Burak Kara/Getty Images)