Influence of the COVID‐19 pandemic on an emergency medical service system: a population‐based, descriptive study in Osaka, Japan

AIM: Novel coronavirus infection (COVID‐19) was confirmed in Wuhan, China in December 2019, and the COVID‐19 pandemic has spread around the world. However, no clinical studies on the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on emergency medical service (EMS) systems have been carried out. METHODS: This was a retrospective study with a study period from 1 January 2020 to 14 April 2020. We included the patients transported by ambulance for acute diseases and traffic accidents in Osaka city, Japan. The main outcome of this study was the difficulty in hospital acceptance. We calculated the rate of difficulty of hospital acceptance for each month for acute diseases and traffic accidents. RESULTS: Between 1 January and 14 April 2020, 36,981 patients were transported to hospitals by ambulance for acute diseases and 3,096 patients for traffic accidents. There was no difference in the proportion of the difficulty in hospital acceptance due to traffic accidents between 2019 and 2020, but there was an increase in the proportion of the difficulty in hospital acceptance due to acute disease after the 13th week (25–31 March) of 2020 compared to that of 2019. The odds ratio in April was 2.17 (95% confidence interval, 1.84–2.58) for acute disease. CONCLUSION: We assessed the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on the EMS system in Osaka City, Japan and found that, since April 2020, the EMS system in Osaka City has been facing difficulty in terms of hospital acceptance of patients transported to hospital for acute diseases.