Ambulance Victoria has issued an urgent warning to Melbourne and Geelong residents, asking them to only call Triple-Zero for life-threatening emergencies amid high demand for paramedics.
The alert was issued on Friday night, with Ambulance Victoria saying they were extremely busy in metropolitan Melbourne and Greater Geelong, and urging patients to use the Virtual Emergency Department, urgent care clinics, GPs or pharmacists, or on-call nurses.
“We’re seeing high demand at some Melbourne and Geelong hospitals tonight, as well as an increase for our services over the past few days. It’s critical that we all do what we can to save our paramedics – and our hospital emergency departments – for life-threatening emergencies,” Ambulance Victoria said.
“Calling an ambulance will not help you get seen quicker.”
All available crews were deployed at hospitals around Melbourne on Friday to prepare for the heavy expected demand, due to sunny weather, racing events and the unofficial long weekend ahead of Tuesday’s Melbourne Cup, 7News reported.
Ambulance Victoria received more than 2,000 call per day in recent days.
Australians reacted to the warning with disbelief, with many blaming the Labor government for the overloaded system.
“Welcome to your first taste of Communist Victoria. Next, there’ll be no bread or tin cans on the shelves,” one X user said.
“Joke state. Jacinta [Allan] needs to resign effective immediately. Beyond an embarrassment,” said another.
“Mass immigration has put an already struggling system under more pressure, this is Labor’s fault,” said a third.
Others brought up recent anger over Melbourne’s St Vincent’s hospital’s policy to fast-track aboriginal patients, and asked if they’d get an ambulance quicker if they claimed to be indigenous.
“Just say you’re aboriginal and you’ll get an ambo right away,” read one of dozens of similar comments.
Header image credit: (Ed Dunens, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
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