BATON ROUGE - Acadian Ambulance Services says it is dealing with a massive number of flu cases this season, noting the spike is causing 'near-epidemic' levels of sickness.

According to Acadian, it transported 2,211 and patients on Wednesday, a daily record for the 46-year-old service which exceeded numbers usually seen in disaster situations. The Acadian CEO has attributed the increase to a rise in flu-like symptoms.

To meet the increased demand, Acadian says it is continually activating extra crews and units, as well as putting supervisory and management personnel back into the field responding to calls.

The increased transport volume is also stretching the resources of many of hospitals in Acadian’s service area, with many reporting emergency room visits and admissions levels much higher than normal. This is also creating some delays in scheduled, non-emergency transports such as facility transfers.

The service did note that it has enough resources available that response times should not be affected.