The number of calls for the Emergency Ambulance Service has increased over the past week, with some periods of particularly high demand.

The total number of calls over the past seven days has been significantly above the normal daily average for the service. During particularly busy periods on some days, the service has had to respond to multiple calls at the same time meaning officers and off-duty staff being called in to respond.

The Flying Christine III has been sent to Sark three times during the week. The marine ambulance was requested by the Sark doctor for a female with a medical condition around 10 o’clock on Wednesday morning.

The second call was in the early hours of Thursday morning for a separate case involving a female with a medical condition. The Flying Christine III returned to Sark on Friday afternoon for another medical case. On all three occasions volunteer boat crew from St John and a paramedic led medical team from the emergency ambulance service responded.

Other calls have been to patients displaying potential Covid-19 symptoms which can take a significant amount of time and have required staff to wear extra PPE as a precaution. Following these cases ambulances also need to be deep cleaned before they can be deployed to the next incident.

At times volunteers from St John Ambulance Guernsey have been brought in to assist with the cleaning of vehicles. We would like to thank the volunteers who have offered their help at this time.

We are working closely with colleagues at HSC and in the Emergency Department and because many of these call outs can be complex they require a multi-agency approach.

Last week paramedics also responded to three road traffic collisions, two of which occurred on the same evening and one required two ambulances.