Ambulance services are under "unprecedented pressure" with handover delays at a scale that "haven't been seen before", the chief executive of the College of Paramedics has said.
Tracy Nicholls said some ambulances had been waiting outside hospitals for up to nine hours with sick patients on board, before being able to hand over to hospital staff.
She also told Sky News' Sophy Ridge On Sunday programme that the delay for category three calls, where a patient may have fallen, has been "up to 10 hours" in high-pressure areas.
Ms Nicholls described the situation as a "incredible bottleneck" despite the "Herculean efforts" of ambulance and hospital staff.
This week the ECHO reported the ordeal of George Arnold, 75, who waited in agony for three hours lying on ice covered ground after falling and breaking his hip in St Helens, on Wednesday afternoon.
Despite assurances that an ambulance was "on its way" Mr Arnold was eventually rushed to Whiston Hospital by his son, Ian Arnold, and Ian's friend, John Jenson, after they loaded him into Mr Jenson's van on a fishing bed.
He was suffering from hypothermia and was coughing up blood when he arrived, but has since undergone surgery on his hip and is recovering well.
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North West Ambulance Service apologised to the Arnold family and said it had been under massive pressure, with more than 100 emergencies in Merseyside alone at the time.
Ms Nicholls said: "It (the ambulance service) is under unprecedented pressure. We are very used to seeing ambulance services take some strain over the winter months due to the normal pressures we would see any particular year.
"But this year particularly has seen incredible pressure because of the clinical presentation of the patients our members are seeing. They are sicker."
She added: "We are seeing the ambulance handover delays at a scale we haven't seen before."
On handover delays, where ambulances are left queuing outside hospitals with patients inside, Ms Nicholls said: "Our members have reported to us they can wait as little as half-an-hour. We've had some members wait five, six, seven, eight and even nine hours."
There is a "potential risk" people will not be able to get an ambulance in their time of need if pressure on the NHS continues to increase, Ms Nicholls said..
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Asked if there was a risk people might not be able to get an ambulance if the pressure on the NHS continues, Ms Nicholls said: "I think it is a potential risk.
"We are open for business, as is all the NHS. The ambulance services are doing an amazing job under difficult circumstances...
"But I'm sure it's frightening for people to think that because of the pressures from Covid-19 they may somehow not get an ambulance in the same way."
