The union representing paramedics in Toronto issued a "Code Red" earlier this week after stating that there were no ambulances in the city to respond to calls.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, the local ambulance service 416 announced the alert on Tuesday, “Paramedic services in Toronto requested emergency assistance from well-equipped neighboring municipalities with staff yesterday.”

The Toronto paramedic services acknowledged in a statement shared with CP24 that they experienced a volume of emergency calls "higher than usual" on Monday, but did not confirm or deny the union's claim.

A spokesperson for the city's paramedic services said in an email: “Like other paramedic services across Ontario and Canada, we face situations where ambulance availability is low.”

They added, "During busier periods like yesterday, paramedics are routinely diverted from low-priority calls to higher-priority calls, where higher-priority calls will always be responded to first."

The Toronto paramedic service also informed CP24 during a phone call that the term “Code Red” is unique to the union and cannot be tracked.

According to the latest available data, the union stated that the Toronto paramedic services encountered "Code Red" instances 1,139 times in 2021.

CTV News reached out to the union for an interview but did not receive a response. The Toronto paramedic services declined a request for an interview.

Speaking at Queen's Park on Wednesday, Ontario's interim Liberal leader, John Fraser, said that while ambulance shortages across the province are not uncommon, the problem is “particularly acute right now.”

He added, “This is the first time I’ve heard of this happening in Toronto. It’s concerning because if you have an emergency call and there’s no one available, that’s bad.”

Fraser stated that more human resources and improvements in patient offloading at hospitals are needed to address the issue, “so it’s more than just [people]. It’s actually managing the workload better.”

To this end, the Toronto paramedic services stated that patient offloading is "the most significant challenge negatively affecting" ambulance availability in the city, and they are working with their hospital partners to streamline the process.

Dr. Ragu Venugopal, an emergency room physician in Toronto, spoke to CP24 about the "Code Red" alert and said that the ambulance shortage is a compound effect stemming from hospital capacity shortages.

Venugopal added on Wednesday: “We don’t have the capacity and that’s tragic,” “What happens if you see patients on paramedic stretchers in the emergency room and patients remain on paramedic stretchers, and paramedics are stuck in the emergency room and cannot attend to [emergency] calls?”

Venugopal continued that while he still supports Premier Doug Ford's 2018 campaign to end "hallway healthcare," he has not seen any improvement in the three Toronto hospitals he works in. In fact, he says, things have gotten worse.

“We see innovative projects being implemented by hospitals... and we see the province funding nurses specifically to help treat offloaded patients. But the truth is, that’s not enough.”