Eastern Health officials offered a blunt assessment of ambulance capabilities on the northeast Avalon in a briefing to the provincial Department of Health three months ago. "As it stands, our data shows that we had 2,022 occurrences over 12 months, whereby we had no ambulance available to respond." Red alerts happen when there is no Eastern Health ambulance on standby, immediately available to respond to a call. It was emailed by Eastern Health Vice-President of Quality Kenneth Baird to an assistant deputy minister in the Department of Health, and other health officials, on Oct. 27. COVID concernsThe day the Eastern Health briefing note outlining all these issues was emailed to the government, there were just four active COVID-19 cases in the province.

Source: CBC News January 25, 2021 09:22 UTC