key: cord-0964571-exm7h5d5
authors: DUCHATEAU, François-Xavier; DELAUNE, Eugene; VANHALEWYN, Eric; LEPETIT, Anne
title: COVID-19: Impact of Covid-19 on use of air ambulances for international medical assistance
date: 2021-05-09
journal: Air Med J
DOI: 10.1016/j.amj.2021.05.002
sha: d84a46c91a016a61b4aa48dcc91c6255547c23aa
doc_id: 964571
cord_uid: exm7h5d5

nan

care nurses. Additionally, Allianz Partners has internal medical teams for evacuations and repatriations. These teams are mostly made up of emergency physicians and critical care registered nurses as well [2, 3] . The majority of repatriations with medical escorts on scheduled, commercial aircraft are performed by these internal teams. Although we do staff some of our air ambulance missions on chartered aircraft using our internal medical teams, the majority of these missions are contracted to external air ambulance providers.

For the purpose of this study, we considered both commercial and dedicated air ambulance transports conducted by four of our major centers: North American (Canada), Asia Pacific (Australia), Belgium and France (the last two representing Europe). We compared the transport activity from these centers for the period of 16 March, 2020 through 31 August, 2020 to the activity for the same period in 2019. Data is expressed as percentages and compared using a chi-square test, p< 0.05 being considered as significant.

During the study period, we transported 215 patients. 43% (92 patients) were transported by specialized fixed-wing air ambulances, compared to 32% (363 patients) who were transported by specialized fixed wing air ambulances during the same period in 2019. p = 0.0036. Detailed data are showed in Table 1 .

Our data demonstrates: 1) the volume of transports decreased dramatically in 2020 (by a factor of five) compared to the same period in 2019. 2) As expected, the proportion of specialized air ambulances was significantly higher. However, considering the low overall volume of medical transports, there is no significant risk of the demand for air ambulance transports exceeding the availability of aircraft in the market. As travel restrictions are gradually eased and the availability of commercial flights increases, we will need to deliberate in a gradual shift back to the pre-COVID model of considering commercial flight options over dedicated air ambulance so that the profound increase in percentage of air ambulance transports linked with Covid-19 to become permanent.

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