Lewis County Emergency Responders Adopt New Protocol on Aid Calls

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In light of the coronavirus pandemic, Lewis County emergency medical services have adopted a modified protocol in an effort to keep first responders safe too.

Every call to dispatch starts with an Emerging Infectious Disease Surveillance (EIDS) protocol, Riverside Fire Authority Captain Scott Weinert said. The acronym is essentially a series of questions the dispatch er will ask the caller to identify if the place the first responders are being sent to has the potential of being contaminated with the coronavirus.

“Let’s say you’re calling for a diabetic problem. They are still going to enact the EIDS protocol and they’re going to ask questions like: does anyone in the home have a fever right now or flu-like symptoms? … That information is being relayed to us while we’re en route to the call,” Weinert said.

How individual districts respond to cases may vary in minor details, but every case in Lewis County begins with the EIDS protocol.

Calls that don’t pose a threat are classified as “EIDS negative,” but for calls that do present the possibility of coming into contact with the coronavirus,         responders will be advised to wear the appropriate personal protective equipment like gloves, a mask and a gown.

For the RFA, Once EMTs are on the site — fully donned in their PPEs — they try to maintain their social distancing precautions. It could mean just trying to stay 6 feet away from the other people in the household or consolidating the number of hands being used to care for a person.

“If we have to have somebody who is taking vital signs, who is placing a heart monitor on somebody or something like that,” Weinert said. “We’ll task that to one person and maybe try to limit the number of people around the person.”

But at the end of the day, social distancing precautions won’t prevent a person who needs medical attention from receiving it, Weintert said.

At the RFA, when the first responders return to the station, the crews go to a wash station to decontaminate their equipment and then wash their hands before they return to the living quarters. In addition to the decontamination measures, everyone at the RFA gets their temperature taken every 12 hours to ensure no one developed a fever during a shift.

“We’re trying to create a barrier between our vehicles and our equipment and our living quarters,” Weinert said.

And when they are back in the living quarters, they try to continue their social distancing as much as they can.

Similar measures are being taken at Lewis County Fire Districts 4 (Morton), 5 (Napavine) and 6, in rural Chehalis, as well as the Chehalis Fire Department.



Weinert, along with Fire District 4 Chief Bill Reynolds, Fire District 5 Chief Dan Mahoney and Fire District 6 and Chehalis Fire Department Chief Ken Cardinale had relatively positive information to report from their respective departments’ coronavirus response.

None of the first responders at the RFA or fire districts 4, 5 and 6 had contracted the coronavirus, the volume of calls being taken by fire districts in the county have dropped off substantially and the supply of PPEs at the respective fire districts is doing okay for now.

Weinert said since March 27, the call volume for the RFA is down 30 percent and the call volume county-wide for fire departments is down 50 percent.

However, Weinert said he wasn’t so sure if the decline in calls is a good thing.

“We are kind of concerned that people are not calling 911 (because) they’re maybe concerned about going to the hospital, they’re worried about being exposed at the hospital or something like that,” Weinert said.

Weinert acknowledged the concern is speculative, but if it is true, it could present a separate issue within the county altogether — people are choosing not to go to the hospital when they might need to go to the hospital.

Reynolds and Cardinale have a similar inclination to Weinert, except they’ve noticed fewer calls from people with issues that wouldn’t necessarily require a trip to the hospital, but they prefer to err on the side of caution.

Cardinale also isn’t as optimistic about how long the supply of PPEs at his department will last if the coronavirus spreads more quickly in Lewis County.

“If we had a huge outbreak and every call we were going on was for COVID-19, we would be out of PPE pretty quickly,” Cardinale said.