(KCEN) -- Fort Worth's ambulance service says it is seeing a dramatic rise in 9-1-1 calls because of the flu.
Their EMS service averaged 267 calls per day in December.
But in just the first nine days of January it saw a whopping 299 calls each day.
Calls that were potentially flu-related saw a double digit increase.
Hospital staffing has seen an increase to help handle the high volume of calls.
Matt Zavadsky with Medstar said, "We encourage people to call 9-1-1 because if they think they're having an emergency, we really need to respond to them. But we may modify the type of response that we're sending to them because of the dramatic increase in call volume."
Tarrant County also has a non-emergency line that sends some callers straight to nurses, instead of tying up emergency lines.
