He added: “We coped as best we could yesterday, but it’s incredibly important to recognise that we can’t go on copying with industrial action in the NHS… There are all sorts of knock on effects.
“We will repeat the call, which is to trade unions and to the Government to step away from rhetoric and step towards negotiation. We can’t drift into more and more industrial action.”
Jason Killens, the head of the Wales Ambulance Service, also warned that there will “certainly be some hangover from the industrial action”.
“It’s possible that patients in our communities that would have ordinarily called us yesterday didn’t because they saw the advice and the fact that the strikes were taking place, so they may well do that today,” he said.
“I wouldn’t necessarily say that we got away with it… There were patients that waited longer than we would like, there were some that got no response at all.”