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Despite a growing number of isolations and absences linked to the pandemic, Ottawa’s emergency services have so far been able to mitigate the effects of a precipitous rise in COVID-19 cases.

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On Monday, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Kieran Moore said about 20 to 30 per cent of workers across all sectors could call in sick in the coming weeks. Health officials fear that such staffing shortages could leave hospitals dangerously understaffed, but other critical sectors are also at risk.

Police departments and other emergency service providers in and around Ottawa say they are so far able to manage staffing levels, but in some cases staff are being paid overtime, shuffled to fill gaps where there may be shortages or have canceled vacations.

The Ottawa Police Service has enacted its “reserve staffing” model, the service’s pandemic team said Tuesday. The model, which was developed in 2020, was designed to ensure that the police service would have a “percentage of staff in healthy reserve.”

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“As such, when officers have COVID symptoms and need to isolate, we have officers who are able to step in,” a spokesperson said. “This model is in place for the next 12 weeks and will hopefully carry us through the peak of the Omicron wave. At this point, we are able to staff frontline appropriately and have not had any major impact on our response time or our ability to respond to calls for service.”

Other police forces in the area reported being as of yet unaffected by the rise in COVID-19 cases or able to mitigate its effects.

The RCMP’s National Division said it had been able to provide front-line services with no change since March 2020. The Ontario Provincial Police said it was able to move staff around to areas where COVID-19 was keeping more officers off the streets.

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“As a large, provincial service,” an OPP spokesperson wrote, “we are able to redeploy members to any areas of the province experiencing a more significant impact from COVID-19 to ensure the safety and security of all the communities we serve. We are also able to redeploy some non-front-line members to front-line duties if required.”

Gatineau police said that, despite a growing number of isolations and absences linked to the pandemic, they were able to maintain operational capacity with no change.

Other emergency services in Ottawa, including paramedic and firefighting services, were also able to continue to provide services, but not without internal shuffling.

“Our services are still very active,” said Kim Ayotte, the City of Ottawa’s general manager of emergency and protective services. “We haven’t dropped in our level of services and I know some people will ask, ‘How is that possible?’ Well, we’re filling the spots in with overtime, and some people have canceled their vacation.”

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Ayotte also said he was hopeful that mitigation measures, including physical distancing, would be enough to keep the new wave of COVID-19 infections from overwhelming city services.

“When you consider all of those different types of mitigation factors, you can quickly see that we can still provide service, however, Omicron is spreading very quickly. so we keep our fingers crossed and we ask those who are sick to stay home and hopefully those additional physical distancing measures et cetera will help as well and hopefully we’ll all get through this soon enough,” he said.

The virus continues to disrupt staffing levels across the economy. The Ottawa International Airport has warned travellers that various parts of the travel process could be slower because of the impact of isolation guidelines on its workers.

On Tuesday, the city announced it would temporarily close its recreation and cultural facilities, including recreation complexes, community centres, arenas, swimming pools, theatres, galleries and museums for at least 21 days as an additional step to reduce contact between people and tp slow the progress of COVID-19.