Patients deferring visits to GPs during COVID-19 may have contributed to a surge of non-urgent calls to Ambulance Victoria which sparked a “code red” declaration.

Ambulance Victoria took the extraordinary step of telling people not to call triple zero unless it was an emergency on Monday night as the mercury remained well above 20°C across the city.

At the time, paramedics were dealing with a high volume of non-urgent calls in metropolitan Melbourne and those patients were instead told to contact NURSE-ON-CALL or visit their GP.

All 1000 of Ambulance Victoria’s critically unwell Code 1 patients had their requests cleared within the required time frame, Health Minister Martin Foley told reporters on Tuesday.