Gyeonggi Fire Department Produces 'COVID-19 Screening Form' in 25 Languages Nationwide for the First Time

[Asia Economy (Suwon) = Reporter Lee Young-gyu] The Gyeonggi-do Fire and Disaster Headquarters has produced the nation's first 'Foreigners' COVID-19 Screening Questionnaire' for ambulance transport and will equip frontline ambulances with it within this month.

The 'Foreigners' COVID-19 Screening Questionnaire' was created in 25 languages including English, Chinese, and Vietnamese to allow foreigners using 119 ambulances to easily answer questions related to COVID-19 and for paramedics to verify the responses.

The main screening questions include ▲ countries visited within the last 14 days and contact with confirmed cases (self-quarantined individuals) ▲ presence of symptoms such as fever, chills, and headache ▲ COVID-19 testing (PCR) conducted within the last 3 days and vaccination status.

The Gyeonggi Fire Headquarters produced 300 sets of the questionnaire, divided into 1 or 2 volumes per language (200 sheets per volume), and will place one set in every ambulance within this month.

This 'Foreigners' COVID-19 Screening Questionnaire' was developed based on ideas from frontline paramedics.

Until now, paramedics have asked several COVID-19 related questions to patients during ambulance transport, but communication difficulties with foreigners have exposed paramedics to infection risks, raising concerns.

According to the Gyeonggi Fire Headquarters, from January last year to July this year, a total of 15,213 foreigners were transported to hospitals by 119 ambulance teams. By nationality, Chinese accounted for the largest number at 8,845, followed by Americans (1,405), Vietnamese (1,338), and Uzbeks (1,238).

During this period, the total number of ambulance transports was 605,577, with foreigners accounting for 2.5% of transports in Gyeonggi-do.

Lee Sang-gyu, head of the Gyeonggi Fire Headquarters, stated, "With the production of this foreigners' COVID-19 screening questionnaire, we expect to alleviate the difficulties paramedics face in communicating with foreigners and significantly reduce infection risks. We will continue to collect feedback from frontline paramedics to improve the questionnaire and implement various infection control and safety measures for paramedics."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.