A new report issued by the city’s auditor general revealed that Toronto residents who need help from the police, fire teams, or paramedics wait a long time before their calls are answered.

In the report to be presented before the Police Services Board meeting next week, the auditor general found that the city’s 911 emergency call center failed to meet its minimum standards for answering calls almost every day last year.

The center, run by the Toronto Police Service, has a minimum standard to answer 90 percent of all 911 calls within 15 seconds. The report found that the call center did not meet the target from 2018 to 2021, with many callers waiting for more than a minute.

The report explains that call volume and staffing issues were at the core of the delays last year, which saw more than 13,000 callers waiting over a minute for an answer. At least 424 callers waited more than four minutes, and on Sundays during peak hours, wait times could be eight minutes or longer.

For his part, the auditor general said the center must hire more operators if it wants to meet industry-standard wait times.

On the other hand, emergency rooms in Ontario also suffer from long wait times; despite a decrease in the COVID-19 case load, Ontario hospital emergency rooms are also struggling with patients waiting record times to get admitted.

The latest statistics published by Ontario Health indicate that patients waited an average of 20 hours in April, the longest average wait time ever in that month in the province, according to CBC.

Doctors say that patients are now coming to hospitals with many post-COVID problems, such as lung damage, blood clots, strokes, and heart attacks.

In a tweet by Dr. Kashif Pirzada, an emergency room doctor in Toronto sharing his concerns about the healthcare system, he says, "The public doesn’t realize it, but the system we rely on is tearing apart and is on the verge of collapse. We have never seen it this bad in our entire careers."

In the same context, Dr. Pirzada said that wait times can now range from six to eight hours if you go to emergency rooms. He added that the province must give these clinics, primary care doctors, and tools the means to work safely.

Recently, SickKids Hospital in Toronto reported that children are waiting up to four times longer than usual.

Edited by: Dima Abu Khair