A sudden surge of calls at midnight has seen the ambulance service overwhelmed by demand, prompting it to enact its code red strategy.
Ambulance Victoria has enacted its seventh code red escalation in as many months, with the service overwhelmed by demand overnight.A "sudden surge" of calls around midnight overwhelmed the serviceThe code red was called just before 2am and was in place for about 90 minutes.
As part of the procedure, the ambulance service calls in additional off-duty staff, performs rapid offloading of patients at hospitals and sends non-emergency ambulances to respond to cases. Ambulance Victoria's executive director of operational communications, Lindsay Mackay, said there were no extraordinary factors that led to the code red.
"There really wasn't anything that we could see that was different, other than we had a sudden surge in calls that came in just around midnight," Ms Mackay said. "They just kept coming in for a couple of hours and that's really what led us towards activating the escalation plan."