Residents have been forced to wait up to 26 hours for an ambulance to take them to hospital in Hong Kong as demand soars during the escalating Covid-19 crisis and manpower levels suffer after hundreds of paramedics fell ill with the virus.

Director of Fire Services Joseph Leung Wai-hung appealed to residents who tested positive but had mild or no symptoms to avoid calling ambulances.

"Frontline manpower is very tight at the moment," said Leung, who oversees the city's fleet of ambulances. "And for Covid-19 cases, they take us two to three times longer to handle them, so it further lowers the circulation rate (of vehicles).

"For every four cases, we can only respond to one. That's the slowest response time ever. In one of the cases, a patient had to wait over 26 hours for an ambulance."

As of 4pm on Saturday, 650 patients were still waiting for ambulance service.

"There may be some cases where a seriously ill patient won't be able to have immediate ambulance services or receives delayed treatment, which could result in serious consequences," the director said.

Only 182 ambulances were operating at 5pm, down from the usual 260, a drop of 30 per cent.

A total of 268 paramedics have been infected with Covid-19 and 410 were in isolation after being deemed close contacts of other cases, according to the department.

"Very valuable life-saving resources should be reserved for really critical cases with urgent need for medical treatment," Leung said.

As of Friday, more than 60,000 residents who tested positive were waiting to be admitted to hospital or community isolation facilities. Health authorities have provided guidelines on how to minimise the risk of infecting others and ways to treat cases suffering only mild symptoms.

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