New Yorkers refusing to be hospitalized over fear of getting coronavirus

FDNY statistics show that the number of New Yorkers who refuse to be taken to hospitals has more than doubled amid the coronavirus crisis — with EMTs blaming the situation on fear of contracting the deadly disease, The Post has learned.
Year-to-date data show an overall 73 percent increase in 911 calls that resulted in “refusals of medical aid,” with 37,968 cases compared to 21,982 during the same period in 2019.
But during March — when COVID-19 began spreading across the city with a vengeance — RMAs jumped by 118 percent, from 6,777 in 2019 to 14,706 this year.
And during early April, the number skyrocketed from 2,578 to 8,630 — an astonishing 235 percent surge.
One FDNY paramedic said some 911 calls about potentially life-threatening symptoms — such as chest pain — were resulting in patients willing to risk death rather than go to a hospital.
“There are numerous patients refusing because of COVID-19. People have underlying conditions and are refusing transport,” EMT Luis Lopez told The Post.
“Once we evaluate, they often say they are not going to the hospital because of the virus.”
He added: “We always want them to go because if you are calling 911 you obviously felt it was an emergency. But because of conditions [at the hospitals], people are refusing.”
Another FDNY paramedic — Megan Pfeiffer, who works in hard-hit Queens — said she’d encountered similar situations due to the pandemic.
“I had a few that were non-COVID that were hesitant to go to the hospital but we had to take them,” Pfeiffer told The Post.
“Those almost are harder than the COVID patients.”
Pfeiffer was recently featured in a front-page Post report that detailed how the city’s paramedics were essentially performing “battlefield triage” and “pretty much bringing patients to the hospital to die.”
A neurosurgeon at Manhattan’s Mount Sinai Hospital has also tweeted a series of warnings that people with symptoms of a stroke — including the deadliest type, known as emergent large vessel occlusion or ELVO — shouldn’t avoid hospitals.

“People are afraid…past few days we’ve had 3 #stroke patients delay calling EMS for hours because they were afraid to be brought to a hospital,” Dr. J Mocco wrote on Friday.
Mocco also tweeted that the number of ELVO cases handled by Mount Sinai’s Cerebrovascular Center has nearly doubled — and that he believed strokes were on the rise because COVID-19 “has a pro-inflammatory component.”
“Right now, people keep hearing they should avoid hospitals for non-emergencies, however, strokes are life-threatening,” Mocco told The Post in a direct message over Twitter on Sunday.
“We have to balance the message. Those suffering #BEFAST stroke symptoms are ALWAYS, even during this COVID pandemic, urged to get to the closest ER or call 911.”
FDNY spokesman Frank Dwyer noted that “overall call volume has been up dramatically” this year, with 202,000 year-to-date compared to 167,000 during the same period in 2019.
“So, there could be some correlation there — more overall calls would also lead to more RMAs overall,” he said.
https://nypost.com/2020/04/12/coronavirus-fears-have-new-yorkers-avoiding-hospitals-in-nyc/