A “critical incident” was declared by the Welsh ambulance service on Monday evening due to significantly increased demand and extensive handover delays.
The ambulance service, which covers 3 million-plus people across Wales, said more than 340 calls were waiting to be answered at the time the critical incident was declared.
More than half of the vehicles were also waiting to hand over patients outside hospitals, leading to some people waiting “many hours” for an ambulance and staff taking longer to answer calls.
The public have been urged to call 999 only for serious emergencies.
The Welsh ambulance services university NHS trust said it had taken additional measures to ensure it could continue to deliver a service to the public.
Stephen Sheldon, its head of service, said: “It is very rare that we declare a critical incident, but with significant demand on our service and more than 90 ambulances waiting to hand over patients outside of hospital, our ability to help patients has been impacted.
“Regrettably, this means that some patients will wait longer for an ambulance to arrive and for their calls to be answered.
“For that, we are very sorry because this is not the level of service we want to provide.
“We understand that this is frustrating for patients, but can assure them that we are doing everything we can to relieve the pressure on our service.”
A critical incident is the highest alert level used by the NHS and allows bosses to take immediate steps to create capacity.
Sheldon added: “The public can help by only calling 999 in the event of a life-threatening emergency – that’s a cardiac arrest, chest pain or breathing difficulties, loss of consciousness, choking or catastrophic bleeding.
“If it’s not a life-threatening emergency, then it’s important you use one of the many alternatives to 999, starting with the symptom checkers on our NHS 111 Wales website as well as your GP, pharmacist and minor injuries unit.”
Earlier on Monday, Walsall healthcare NHS trust, which operates Walsall Manor hospital, declared a critical incident due to the number of people needing urgent and emergency hospital care.
The trust said it was seeing increased numbers of people requiring hospital treatment, predominantly with respiratory conditions.
Hampshire hospitals NHS foundation trust declared a critical incident earlier this month due to sustained pressures at Basingstoke and Winchester hospitals. This included a high admission rate, a high number of infectious patients requiring isolation and a low discharge rate.
Source: theguardian.com
