Exhausted Aussie paramedic SLAMS Gladys Berejiklian as he warns car crash and heart attack patients are already being treated in the 'freezing rain' for 8 hours in ambulance bays with hospitals near breaking point

An overwhelmed paramedic has warned New South Wales hospitals are 'hurtling towards a cliff' and being overwhelmed by patients, as he revealed medics have been asking the government for additional support for weeks. 

Brett Simpson is a delegate of the Australian Paramedics Association and works on the front lines treating patients as an intensive care paramedic.

The already tough job has been made significantly harder during NSW's relentless Covid outbreak, with hospitals nearing capacity and ambulances forced to treat patients outside - with no more beds left for urgent care. 

'With all respect to the premier, we've been begging the government for weeks if not months. It's taking people dying in their homes to spur them into action,' Mr Simpson told The Project on Sunday. 

Paramedics are being forced to treat patients outside ERs in car park and in the rain because Covid case loads are causing delays in the system (pictured: RPA hospital on August 1) 

As Sydney heads into its 11th week of lockdown, premier Gladys Berejiklian admitted that case numbers will keep going up for the next few weeks, with 1,030 patients already in hospital battling the virus.

Of those, 175 are fighting for life in ICU with 72 breathing through a ventilator.  

But with hospitalisations set to peak in October and paramedics and emergency medical staff already being stretched to breaking point, Mr Simpson warned patients may not be able to receive care.

'The resources we've been given to fight this pandemic are like trying to take out a rhino with a Nerf gun. It just doesn't work and we really need some genuine action to help steer us out of this crisis,' he said.

He said the rapid rise in Covid case numbers as Sydney battles a second wave caused by the Delta variant - on top of their regular workload and people putting off treatment of chronic health conditions - was causing significant delays.

'People still have heart attacks and car accidents... We're seeing a lot of closed front doors to emergency departments because out staff literally can't get in,' he added.

'Being left outside to care for patients in the freezing rain for eight or nine hours is just such a struggle.'

'And then to finally get in and see the pressure the nursing staff and the medical staff are under - it's unrelenting.' 

He added that he doubted there would be a paramedic or health care worker who wouldn't have a story about the extra strain they are under or about not being able to get the best treatment to a patient fast enough. 

A Sydney paramedic attends to a patient on August 8 with hospitals struggling under the strain of the extra admissions of Covid patients

In mid-August at Westmead Hospital there was more than a dozen ambulances with Covid patients which had to wait more than five hours in the car park as the ER was packed with doctors even bringing down equipment to run tests   

Earlier this week the Ms Berejiklian claimed about 5.5 per cent of Delta cases went to hospital but official figures from Sunday show it's really 11 per cent - or more than one in every ten Covid cases. 

Along with their regular use in hospitals, Covid is pushing the 855 staffed ICU beds across NSW to 80 per cent capacity - with the forecast peak of the second wave a month away. 

Victoria is pushed even more with 90 per cent of ICU beds occupied. 

'The modelling indicates to us that the peak is likely to be here in the next week or two,' the premier said on Sunday.

'The peak in hospitalisation and intensive care is likely to be with us in October.'

But she also insisted the state's health system was coping with the added pressure.

'I don't know who's advising the premier or the health minister... but you've only got to be on the street or on the front line in an ambulance or emergency department to know the crises is here the time for action was months ago.' Mr Simpson said. 

'People aren't stupid, when they call triple zero and it takes an hour for their ambulance... We just hope whatever they've got planned for the next few weeks just eases some of the pressure on us.' 

Mr Simpson told The Project host Lisa Wilkinson he hoped the NSW government had support lined up for struggling paramedics 

Mr Simpson added for those treating patients, the caseload would not drop as lockdown were lifted. 

'This is not a crises that's going to end in six or eight weeks we anticipate this to be going for months and months and months especially as we start to open up.'   

He added he would like to see - as a start - 30 graduate paramedics hired as ambulance assistants to be reclassed as trainee paramedics, trained up on the job, and given access to sick leave and carers leave. 

NSW reported 1.485 new locally acquired cases of COVID-19 and three deaths on Sunday as authorities battle to contain the spread of the virulent Delta strain through the locked down state. 

In some welcome news, the premier said 40 per cent of the state's population was now fully vaccinated.

'That is an incredible milestone to have reached given where we were a few months ago,' she said.

There are 30 new ambulance assistants that Mr Simpson wants to see reassigned as trainee paramedics (pictured, an ambulance parked outside Camperdown Hospital on August 31)