At the start of the pandemic in 2020, all non-essential businesses closed, including swim lessons. When Florida reopened, tourists quickly resumed visiting. Osceola County, located in Central Florida, noticed an influx of drowning and near-drowning calls. Several agencies and organizations reported an increase of drownings in 2021, up to 98 from 69 in 20201. In addition to the COVID-related stress, the drownings were taking their toll on first responders’ mental health.

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During a pandemic, dispatch agencies need a robust triage tool when emergency services become stressed from high call loads, workforce degradation, and hospital saturation. This tool needs to be scalable at the local level so that it can escalated and de-escalated at the discretion of local EMS authorities. The purpose of Protocol 36 is to allow Emergency Medical Dispatchers to identify—at the point of call intake—those patients that are most likely COVID-19 symptomatic, and then triage them within a single dispatch protocol that allows the most efficient and effective use of pandemic-related...

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