Vancouver's fire department preparing to stop responding to the site of non-critical medical calls

Vancouver's fire department is preparing to stop responding to the site of non-critical medical calls in order to preserve its resources during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fire Chief Darrell Reid says the department is looking at changing its service model so that firefighters only respond to the most critical medical calls, which may include COVID-19 cases in the future.

But he says the idea is to triage calls to ensure the department can still respond to major fires and other emergencies.

Under a triage system, he says emergency calls will be prioritized using a scoring system based on their severity.