By PHILIP MARCELO, ANNE D’INNOCENZIO and BOBBY CAINA CALVAN

BOSTON (AP) — Staff absences for COVID-19 tripled this month in London’s hospitals, and nearly 10% of the city’s firefighters called out sick.

In New York, about 2,700 police officers were absent earlier this week — twice the number who are ill on an average day. And on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, grocery worker Judy Snarsky says she’s stretched to her limit, working 50 hours a week and doing extra tasks because her supermarket has around 100 workers when it should have closer to 150.

“We don’t have enough hands. Everybody is working as much as they physically and mentally can,” the 59-year-old in Mashpee said. “Some of us have been going like a freight train.”

The worldwide surge in coronavirus cases driven by the new omicron variant is the latest blow to hospitals, police departments, supermarkets and other critical operations struggling to maintain a full contingent of front-line workers as the pandemic enters its third year.

Governments have taken steps to stem the bleeding across a range of jobs considered essential for society, from truckers and janitors to child care providers and train conductors. But nurses and other workers worry that continued staffing woes will put the public at greater risk and increase burnout and fatigue among their ranks.

Seattle Officer Mike Solan, who leads his city’s police union, said his department is down about 300 officers from its usual force of 1,350.

“It’s difficult for our community because they’re waiting for that call for help,” he said. “And then we’re at risk because we don’t have the proper safe numbers to have a safe working environment when we answer that call for help.”

Michelle Gonzalez, a nurse at New York’s Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, said she and her intensive care unit colleagues never truly had a break from COVID-19, and the arrival of omicron has only reawakened her post-traumatic stress.

“Prior to work, I get really bad anxiety,” she said. “If I’ve been off for two days, I will come back in a panic because I don’t know what I’m walking into.”

Countries including Spain and the U.K. have reduced the length of COVID-19 quarantines to ease staffing shortages by letting people return to work sooner after testing positive or being exposed to the virus. The U.S. did similar for health care workers only.

Meanwhile in the U.S., states such as Massachusetts have called in hundreds of National Guard members to help fill the gaps in hospitals and nursing homes, where they serve meals, transport patients and do other nonclinical work.

In Seattle, Mayor Jenny Durkan has promised to veto legislation repealing a $4-an-hour hazard pay raise for grocery workers, which has been in place for nearly a year in some major West Coast cities, including Los Angeles and Berkeley and Long Beach, California.

“Now is not the time to roll back the pay for these critical front-line workers,” the Democratic mayor said earlier this week.

Unions representing health care workers gripe that far too many hospitals failed to fill staff vacancies or to retain pandemic-weary staff.

For example, there are 1,500 nursing vacancies in New York’s three largest hospitals alone, or about double the number at the onset of the pandemic, said Carl Ginsberg, a spokesman for the 42,000-member New York State Nurses Association.

“There are not enough nurses to do the job right, and so there are situations where the units have dangerous conditions, where patients are in jeopardy,” he said.

In London, the U.K.’s omicron epicenter, a wave of staff absences is hitting hospitals just as COVID-19 admissions have doubled in three weeks. The latest surge will probably persist until mid-January, officials said.

“It wouldn’t take much to cause a crisis,” said David Oliver, a consultant physician at a hospital in southeast England.

The operators of U.S. nursing homes, which were crippled by some of the deadliest COVID-19 outbreaks early in the pandemic, are among those pleading for officials to do more.

While cases in long-term care facilities have not risen sharply yet, the industry is bracing for omicron with 15% fewer workers today than when the pandemic began, said Rachel Reeves, a spokesperson for the American Health Care Association and the ​National Center for Assisted Living, an industry trade group.

Nursing homes historically struggle to compete with other health care operators because their pay rates are effectively fixed by the government, she said, so providers hope President Joe Biden’s administration can boost Medicaid funding and create staff recruitment and retention programs.

“Caregivers are burned out,” Reeves said. “Not only have many experienced tremendous loss, it has been exhausting — physically and emotionally — battling this virus day in and day out.”

Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan provides $350 billion for state and local governments to provide “premium pay” to essential workers. States are also using other buckets of pandemic funds to bolster their workforce.

In West Virginia, Gov. Jim Justice said Tuesday that his administration will use $48 million of the state’s remaining CARES Act money on recruiting and training nurses to meet a goal of adding more than 2,000 new nurses over the next four years.

But it’s not just health care systems warning of dire consequences and seeking more support.

Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Air Lines, was among those who have called on the Biden administration to cut recommended COVID-19 quarantine times down to five days, or risk further disruptions in air travel. Delta, United and Lufthansa have canceled dozens of flights over the Christmas period as illnesses take a toll on flight crews.

Train operators also warn of sudden cancellations and other service issues as subways and commuter lines endure COVID-19-related staff shortages.

In the U.K., train company LNER said this week that it’s canceling 16 trains a day until Christmas Eve. Transport for London, which operates the subway and employs about 28,000 people, also warned of slowdowns because 500 front-line staff are off work because of COVID-19-related illness.

Even small businesses such as restaurants and nail salons, which are not necessarily considered essential, are preparing to further curtail hours, or briefly shut down if worker shortages worsen.

Manhattan restaurateur Bret Csencsitz said the labor shortage prompted him to reduce seating and eliminate staples such as burgers and oysters from the menu at Gotham, which reopened last month.

Trophy Brewing in Raleigh, North Carolina, cut operating hours and decided to close three of the business’ four locations early on New Year’s Eve, said David Lockwood, the company’s co-owner.

In Washington, D.C., DogMa Daycare & Boarding For Dogs said this week that it was canceling all day care until Jan. 3 because several staff members tested positive for COVID-19.

Daniel Schneider, a Harvard professor focused on low-income workers, said the public should keep in mind that essential workers simply don’t have the luxury of working from home, as some Americans do.

“White-collar workers need to appreciate the real risks that these folks take,” he said. “You can’t ring up groceries from home. You can’t stock shelves from home.”

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D’Innocenzio reported from Sandwich, Massachusetts, and Calvan reported from New York. Associated Press writers Jill Lawless and Kelvin Chan in London; Josh Boak in Washington; Mike Sisak in New York; John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia; and Bryan Anderson in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed to this report.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic

By LAURA UNGAR and TALI ARBEL

AP – Dave Fravel and his wife invited several relatives to their Cape Cod home for Christmas to share food, gifts and the togetherness they’ve longed for during the lonely days of the pandemic. They were also looking forward to a holiday sightseeing trip to New York City.

But the coronavirus spoiled all those plans. With cases surging in their state of Massachusetts and the super-infectious omicron variant racing around the world, they feared spreading the virus even before Fravel’s 18-year-old son, Colin, came down with COVID-19.

Rich England has been there before. In the summer, when the delta variant was surging, he said no to a Christmastime vacation with his parents and sister’s family to London and Scotland. But he, his wife and 2-year-old daughter are keeping plans for a four-day trip from their home in Alexandria, Virginia, to Miami on Dec. 31.

“The safest thing to do would be to say ‘OMG, we have to cancel,’” he said. “But there’s a lot of letters in the Greek alphabet — there’s going to be variants after omicron. You can’t just respond to every single variant by shutting down.”

For the second year in a row, the ever-morphing virus presents would-be revelers with a difficult choice: cancel holiday gatherings and trips or figure out ways to forge ahead as safely as possible. Many health experts are begging people not to let down their guard.

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus put it starkly this week when he said that “an event canceled is better than a life canceled.”

But pandemic fatigue is real. And while travel restrictions in some places have forced cancellations, many governments have been reluctant to order more lockdowns, leaving decisions about who to see and where to go increasingly in the hands of individuals.

Complicating matters is the mystery that surrounds omicron. Scientists now know it spreads fast — perhaps up to three times faster than the delta variant. It also seems to be better at evading vaccines, although boosters rev up protection, particularly against hospitalization and death. But a crucial question remains: Does omicron cause less severe illness than delta? Some research suggests that it does, but the studies are preliminary.

Even if it is milder, omicron could still overwhelm hospitals because of the sheer number of infections. That makes it difficult to know how far to turn down the dial on the festive season.

In the United States, infections average around 149,000 a day, and officials announced this week that omicron dethroned delta as the dominant variant. In Britain, where an omicron-fueled surge is seen as a harbinger for many other European countries, daily cases topped 100,000 for the first time on Tuesday. France, Spain and Italy are also seeing infection spikes.

Fravel and his wife, Sue Malomo, who are both software developers and have six children between them, are worried about omicron and delta. Fravel, 51, said they nixed their trip to New York City because “the thought of being in those big crowds didn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense.”

Neither did having lots of people at their house. Typically, 20 to 25 people filter through between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. But this year, only the kids will come and not all at the same time.

“Right now, the plan is everyone’s just kind of staying put in smaller circles or doing FaceTime,” Fravel said.

England, an energy lobbyist, also weighed his options — and decided a trip could be made. He and his wife both got booster shots, which reassures him, though his daughter is too young for the vaccine.

“We picked Miami in part because we would be able to eat exclusively outdoors and then spend time on the beach and at the pool,” he said. But even he is still hedging: As of Tuesday evening, they were “80/20 going.”

Colombia native Julieta Aranguren has already begun her trip. The 18-year-old was on a stopover in Madrid on Wednesday on her way to Dubai, where she planned to spend time with relatives. She spent thousands of dollars on flights and hotels — booked nine months ago — so she said that she didn’t consider canceling.

But she still faces the unknown. Her group plans to go shopping, dine out and visit the World Expo in Dubai, so “it would be no fun at all if there were more restrictions,” Aranguren said.

It’s still unclear which path most people will take. Ryanair, Europe’s biggest airline, lowered its forecast for the number of passengers for December from 11 million to 10 million, chief executive Michael O’Leary told the Guardian last week.

Several airlines in the United States remain fairly upbeat.

For the period from Dec. 17 through Jan. 3, Delta Air Lines says it expects to fly about 8 million people, more than double last year’s holiday season but short of the 9.3 million passengers in 2019. American Airlines plans about 5,000 daily flights between Dec. 19 and Jan. 1, up from 3,700 at the same time last year. But there were a lot more — 6,300 — during the 2019 holidays.

Both airlines noted that international travel was the most affected by the omicron variant.

That rings true for Alex Wong. The freelance journalist and radio producer in Toronto canceled a mid-December flight to New York that would have been his first trip since the pandemic began. He worried about being stuck in quarantine upon his return, which would leave him unable to see his family during the holidays.

“Feels like I made the right decision and feel better by the day,” he said in a text message. He’s getting a booster shot on Wednesday and seeing his parents, who live nearby, this weekend.

That is the sort of balanced calculation many experts recommend.

Matthew Binnicker, director of clinical virology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said people should consider taking a rapid test for COVID-19 on the day of a gathering or, better yet, a more accurate PCR test 24 hours in advance. But experts warn that tests are not a firewall against infection.

“It’s a good idea to kind of rethink big plans of travel or getting together in large groups,” he said.

Small groups of less than 10 people can gather in safety if they ensure that everyone is vaccinated, wear masks indoors and encourage people most vulnerable to severe disease to stay home. Other experts suggest opening windows to improve ventilation and staying outdoors as much as possible.

“To me, the holidays are a time to think about others. This is often expressed through gift giving, charitable donations or volunteering,” Binnicker said. “But this year, there’s another excellent way to think of others, and that’s to take precautions to stop the spread of COVID-19 and influenza.”

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Associated Press writers Mae Anderson in Nashville, Tennessee, Aritz Parra in Madrid, Emily Schultheis in Vienna and Kelvin Chan in London contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.