Long Covid worsens staff shortages in ambulance services

Long Covid is making staff shortages in ambulance services worse, it has emerged, with more than one in 20 members of staff in one trust absent for more than a month with coronavirus-related sickness.

New data reveal some 40,000 work days across four major ambulance service trusts were lost due to the condition.

It comes as NHS services struggle to cope with rising staff sickness rates and Covid cases.

North East Ambulance Service asked patients to take themselves to accident and emergency for suspected strokes or heart attacks over the New Year weekend, due to a surge in demand.

West Midlands Ambulance Service asked retired staff to return to the frontline to “increase the quality and amount of care” it can provide.

The new data, obtained through Freedom of Information requests, suggests trusts’ staffing levels have been impacted by workers experiencing long-term effects from Covid infection.

NHS England defines long Covid as patients experiencing ongoing symptoms, including fatigue, breathlessness, a cough and muscle pain. Clinical guidelines say the signs and symptoms can continue from four to 12 weeks.

The All Party Parliamentary Group on Coronavirus submitted Freedom of Information requests to ambulance trusts across England and found some workers have been absent for more than a year due to Covid-related sickness.

North West Ambulance Service said one member of staff was absent for 544 days due to Covid-related sickness between March 2020 and September 2021.

South East Coast Ambulance Service had a member of staff who was off sick for 515 days, while a London Ambulance Service worker was absent for 350 days. At the East Midlands Ambulance Service, a worker was sick for 308 days.

South East Coast Ambulance Service recorded 7,390 days in total as lost due to a Covid-related sickness lasting more than 12 weeks.

North West Ambulance Service said it had lost 33,654 full-time equivalent days for workers absent for more than 28 days at a time.

That meant that 398 workers were off sick for more than 28 days - six per cent of its 6,300 workforce.

'Operational gaps being filled'

Richard Webber, of the College of Paramedics, said he was not aware of national long Covid absence rates.

However, he said some trusts were currently reporting “20 to 30 per cent” sickness rates, which was partly to blame on PCR turnaround times.

A spokesman for the North West Ambulance Service said it did not record long Covid absences specifically, and stressed some of the employees included in the figures could have been hospitalised for long periods of time with Covid.

“We acknowledge that staffing hours have been lost, from frontline and corporate services, and these FOI figures also include our corporate service staff, and not just those who work on patient facing frontline roles,” the spokesman said.

The spokesman added that volunteer and private providers, as well as military support, has enabled them to “fill as many operational gaps as possible”.

“Staff who suffer from long-term sickness are closely monitored and supported by their managers and are carefully reintegrated into their roles when well enough to return,” they said.

Layla Moran MP, chairman of the APPG on Coronavirus, said: “While much has been made of how new infections are causing staff shortages across the country, these statistics demonstrate that long Covid is having a huge impact on vital public services.

“The Government cannot continue to ignore those who are suffering as a direct consequence of protecting our country during the darkest days of the pandemic.

“They must recognise long Covid as an occupational disease, provide formal guidance to employers on the issue and create a compensation scheme for key workers who have been unable to return to work.”