The past two months were the busiest for ambulance callouts in the service's history and August's 50000 ambulance incidents was the highest total for a single month, St John said in a statement.
The figures come as Otago schools experience a spike in sickness-related absences with one school keeping its entire senior cohort off school due to a lack of available teachers.
“Winter always brings additional pressures, but this year we’ve seen unprecedented demand,” St John's acting DCE of operations Rosanne Shaw said.
“We have seen a significant rise in respiratory-related emergencies.
"In the past year, ambulance crews responded to almost 6,000 cases of breathing difficulties, up 33% on the 12-month average.”
University of Otago department of biochemistry professor Kurt Krause told the ODT last week while it was true there was a spike in flu-like illnesses in winter every year, this year the peak number of people reporting sickness was delayed.
The Public Health and Forensic Science respiratory illness dashboard showed community influenza-like illnesses were peaking later this year, in August and September.
- Allied Media
