The Geographical Distribution of Probable COVID-19 Pa-tients Transferred by Tehran Emergency Medical Services;a Cross Sectional Study

Mapping of COVID-19 infection in the city can help us know more about how the disease is dis-tributed and spread. This study was conducted to investigate the geographical distribution of probable COVID-19 patients who were transferred to destination hospitals by emergency medical services (EMS) in the first waveof the epidemic, in Tehran, Iran.

This cross-sectional study was performed based on recorded mis-sions during the first 3-month period of the pandemic in Tehran, Iran. All probable cases of COVID-19 who weretransferred to the hospitals following contact with Tehran EMS during the study period were enrolled. Arc-GISsoftware was utilized to draw the distribution map of the contact places of the cases.

In this study, thedata of 4018 patients were analyzed (60.9% male). The mean age of the patients was 54.1 ± 20.7 years; and themean age of the patients had increased with time during the studied 3 months (p = 0.003). The average inci-dence rate of this disease in Tehran during the study period was 4.6 per 10,000 population. Generally, the lowestand highest raw frequencies of Tehran COVID-19 contamination were seen in municipal districts 21 and 4, re-spectively. The raw frequency of cases during the 3-month study period also showed that the highest numberof cases in Tehran occurred in municipal districts 5 and 4, respectively.

In the present study, usinggeographic information systems (GIS), geographical distribution map of COVID-19 in Tehran, Iran, during thefirst 3 months of the pandemic was drawn.