FDNY Study: EMS Staffers Got Virus 5 Times More Often Than Firefighters

While Emergency Medical Service workers and firefighters were 15 times more likely to contract the coronavirus than members of the public during the early weeks of the pandemic, the Fire Department's decision to limit firefighters' responses to calls involving COVID symptoms made them five times less likely to develop severe infections than their EMS counterparts, according to a study led by Dr. David Prezant, the FDNY's Chief Medical Officer.   

The exemption of firefighters from responding to those cases, even as they responded to calls involving heart attacks and other maladies where COVID symptoms might also be present, was designed to minimize the possibility that entire firehouses—where members eat and sometimes sleep—would come down with the virus.