Covid 19 Omicron outbreak: St John Auckland workload up 31 per cent, 150 staff unwell

Covid patients are being urged to self-manage symptoms as much as possible before calling an ambulance, as St John battles a 31 per cent spike in average workload in Auckland.

The workload has jumped by 21 per cent from the previous week, or roughly 88 more incidents in Auckland per day.

St John is receiving a flood of calls about Covid-related symptoms, such as chest pains and shortness of breath, and has resulted to providing advice over the phone for some patients to free up ambulances for emergencies.

Nationwide yesterday ambulance officers attended 159 Covid-related callouts, and 46 Covid cases were transported in an ambulance.

Thousands of St John volunteers are taking up short-term contracts so staff from around the country can be seconded to Auckland.

A number of non-urgent calls are causing the spike in workload, St John said, and can be avoided if everyone is prepared for Covid or calls their local GP instead.

St John is receiving around 2000 calls a day – 500 are in Auckland - and around 1500 incidents need an ambulance.

But currently 150 St John staff are at home unwell, and 66 of them have Covid.

"That's placing immense pressure on us at a time where demand across health system is already high and we are carrying a vacancy factor of 10 per cent," said deputy chief executive of ambulance operations Dan Ohs.

But he said the increase in calls is mostly for non-urgent problems that could have been avoided if Covid patients called Healthline, their GP, or simply had better self-management instead.

"Some people go to the emergency department, get frustrated with the wait times, drive home and call an ambulance.

"We want to dispel the myth that ambulances will get you through the emergency department quicker, that's simply not true."

St John Deputy Chief Executive - Ambulance Operations, Dan Ohs. Photo / NZME

In some cases, callers with non-life-threatening problems are waiting up to 14 hours for an ambulance.

Some are being provided with advice over the phone from a paramedic or nurse.

"If you call us and don't have a life-threatening problem, you can expect to wait a long time," said Ohs.

He is reminding people that some chest discomfort and shortness of breath is a normal symptom of Covid, but acknowledges it can be a "worrying" experiencing for those at home.

"We expect our threshold for leaving people at home and for not responding will change as community threshold for self-management changes," he said.

Auckland patients taken to hospital are also experiencing delays at emergency departments.

Most patients taken to Middlemore Hospital are testing positive for Covid-19, causing ambulance staff to be tied up at the scene and at hospital carrying out protocols such as PPE and testing.

"Right now in Auckland, it's taking us twice as long to turn around hospital [patients] than it did a year ago," said Ohs.

"That's because of precautions taken with Covid relating to PPE, testing and if a patient has [Covid] they can't wait in the corridor they have to be in a negative pressure room."

There are huge delays for ambulance patients at Middlemore Hospital's ED. Photo / Dean Purcell

Some patients who don't need immediate medical intervention are being dropped at the public entrance to the ED, instead of the normal ambulance entrance, as part of a staff-led nationwide initiative over the past four weeks.

"That gave me 30 hours of paid ambulance response time back overnight, that's the equivalent of putting four extra ambulances on the road," said Ohs.

A number of staff have made suggestions to improve their wellbeing as they cope with unprecedented demand.

St John has purchased campervans and put them outside emergency departments "to make the working environment better for our teams", Ohs said.

Suggestions for coffee carts to be placed outside stations have also been responded to.

St John says there are delays on site and at hospital emergency departments with Covid patients. Photo / NZME

Ohs said 180 ambulance assistants are needed to backfill staff in less busy locations - so more paramedics can be sent to Auckland and other busy areas – but there are currently only 80.

St John is calling on other emergency services to help "expand the pool" in the coming days.

"Several dozen" new recruits will be completing training in a few weeks' time and will help to fill around 40 vacancies in Auckland.

"I'm confident we've got the number of ambulances we need to have, to get to the emergencies, but it relies on everyone ... to understand if they're calling us for a non-urgent health problem it's going to take several hours to get there," said Ohs.