City of Toronto to reallocate staff to maintain essential services as Omicron spreads

The City of Toronto says it is redeploying workers to meet the highest priorities, such as maintaining essential services, as it braces for staffing shortages due to the highly contagious Omicron variant as COVID-19 cases continue to surge.

“As the Omicron variant has spread, the City – like cities around the world – is planning for a possible high number of unplanned staff absences due to illness and COVID-19 isolation requirements for both critical and essential services, as well as non-critical and non-essential services,” officials said.

City officials said preparations are being made to reallocate hundreds of staff to support critical and essential services it is responsible for, such as Toronto police, fire and paramedics; drinking water and wastewater services; shelter operations; long-term care; winter operations; and the ongoing response to COVID-19, including vaccinations.

The city said many of the staff members were previously redeployed in 2020 when the pandemic first emerged and are “ready to undertake similar roles.”

Non-essential services will be suspended, such as several in-person counter services at city hall and civic centres. Officials said these staff will move to delivery services remotely.

The city also said it is protecting high-priority Toronto paramedic calls and implementing changes.

“The City has been working with hospital CEOs to alleviate the amount of time paramedics are waiting in Emergency Departments, as hospitals across the province are facing staffing challenges due to absences related to COVID-19,” officials said.”

During busier periods, paramedic responses to low-priority calls will be delayed in order to respond to higher-priority calls.

“Toronto Paramedic Services (TFS) and Toronto Fire Services, therefore, are temporarily implementing changes to their response model that will see Toronto Fire Services respond to additional calls where there is no clear indication of a patient or injury identified during the call taking process. If a patient is subsequently identified, TFS will call Paramedics,” officials said.