’Not coping’: Covid ambulance shock

A public health crisis has spread to critical ambulance shortages, with Covid-positive patients bundled into the same vehicles and forced to wait hours for hospital treatment.

According to the Ambulance Employees Associations’ (AEA), a positive case deemed life threatening needed to wait three hours for an ambulance to arrive.

Another ambulance was also sent to three unwell Covid patients with no backup.

Those paramedics used almost all of the available oxygen, ran out of medications and, despite calling for intensive care backup, there was none available.

It resulted in Covid patients being transported in the same ambulance and then being ramped for 35 minutes.

A separate crew managed to arrive and take the third case to the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH).

AEA Secretary Leah Watkins said the state’s health care system was “not coping”.

“On top of the general ambulance workload that seems to be increasing unabated, now we layer on top of that the Covid workload that’s starting to flow through as borders opened up,” she told ABC Radio on Thursday.

“For most of last night there were 15 life-threatening emergencies uncovered.

“As soon as one was dispatched, another would come in so the co-ordinators were under incredible pressure with 15 cases waiting at any one time.

“Clearly the hospital system and ambulance system are not prepared for this level of Covid patients.”

It’s not the first time Covid patients have been ramped, according to the AEA.

Last week it was revealed at least two patients were forced to wait in the back of ambulances for about an hour and a half, ramped outside the RAH.

There was also internal ramping on December 18, when paramedics were unable to transfer patients due to internal delays.

The AMA said patients’ conditions varied from severe shortness of breath and chest pain.

Following that incident, Ms Watkins said paramedics needed to evacuate the ambulances because it was “too dangerous” to treat highly infectious patients in the enclosed space.

She said there were only a handful of unwell Covid-19 patients that needed to be hospitalised and because the RAH was the dedicated hospital for the virus, it should have been able to accommodate the patients.

“No patient should be ramped, but the ramping of Covid-positive patients in the back of ambulances is completely unsafe and unacceptable,” Ms Watkins said.

“The risks to our members are dramatically increased due to the poor ventilation and enclosed spaces.”