St John Ambulance is experiencing extremely high demand for ambulance services across the country, with incident numbers now exceeding those seen during the Omicron surge.

While high demand during winter is not unusual, this sustained increase in workload has come six weeks earlier than predicted.

In the last three weeks we received 1,588 more calls a week (a 13 percent increase) and 459 more ambulance responses a week (a 6 percent increase) than expected for this time of year. This is combined with an increase in winter illness, with 100 staff on average being off work each day – which is compounded by 130 vacancies nationally.

The increase in demand is impacting both our 111 communications centres and our ability to respond with emergency ambulances.

Callers to our 111 communications centres may experience a delay before their call is answered, and we may not be able to send an ambulance immediately where a problem is non-life threatening.

For this reason, we are asking the public to call their GP or Healthline for non-life-threatening problems, and to reserve ambulances for life or limb threatening emergencies.

Where people do request an ambulance for a non-life-threatening problem, they can expect a call back from a Registered Nurse or Paramedic, who will attempt to provide them the same care and advice that would otherwise be afforded to them if an ambulance crew were to attend the scene.

St John Ambulance has again activated our Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) in Auckland, which will support our operational response across Ambulance Communications, Emergency Ambulance Service (EAS), and Patient Transfer Services. The EOC is tasked will monitoring staffing levels and overseeing the welfare of our people during this busy time.

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