The Omicron explosion has caused a statewide service outage.

Ambulances in Kansas race toward hospitals before abruptly changing directions due to overcrowding. Employee shortages in New York City create delays in trash collection and subway operations, as well as a reduction in the number of firefighters and emergency responders. Security checkpoints at Phoenix’s busiest airport have been shut down, and schools around the country are struggling to locate teachers for their classrooms.

The current outbreak of omicron-fueled coronavirus infections in the United States is disrupting essential operations and services, the latest example of how COVID-19 continues to upend lives more than two years after the pandemic began.

“This really does, I think, remind everyone of when COVID-19 first arrived and there were such tremendous disruptions throughout every aspect of our daily lives,” said Tom Cotter, director of emergency response and preparedness at Project HOPE, a global health group. “And the awful reality is that we won’t be able to forecast what will happen next unless we raise our global immunization rates.”

To keep the public safe, first responders, hospitals, schools, and government organizations have used an all-hands-on-deck approach, but they’re not sure how much longer they can keep it up.

Paramedics in Johnson County, Kansas, work an average of 80 hours each week. Ambulances have been known to be compelled to change course when the hospitals they’re headed to say they’re too busy to help, which confuses the patients’ already worried family members driving behind them. Because there are no beds available when ambulances arrive at hospitals, some emergency patients are forced to wait in waiting rooms.

When the leader of a rural hospital had no where to take its dialysis patients this week, Dr. Steve Stites, chief medical officer at the University of Kansas Facility, said the hospital’s staff checked a textbook and “tried to put in some catheters and find out how to do it.”

He described the situation as a “double punch” for medical facilities. COVID-19 patients increased from 40 on December 1 to 139 on Friday at the University of Kansas Hospital. At the same time, more than 900 employees — or 7% of the hospital’s 13,500-person workforce — have been afflicted by COVID-19 or are awaiting test results.

“What I’m hoping for, and what we’re crossing our fingers for, is that once it peaks, it’ll have the same rapid decrease we saw in South Africa,” Stites said, referring to the country’s dramatic decline in the number of cases. “We have no idea.” That’s all there is to it.”

The omicron version spreads even faster than other coronavirus strains, and it has already taken hold in a number of nations. It also infects persons who have been vaccinated or have been infected by previous versions of the virus more easily. Early investigations reveal, however, that omicron is less likely than the prior delta form to cause severe illness, and that immunization plus a booster still provide substantial protection against serious illness, hospitalization, and death.

Despite this, its ease of transmission has resulted in an increase in cases in the United States, harming businesses, government offices, and public agencies alike.

Customers lined up outside a pharmacy in downtown Boise, Idaho, before it opened on Friday morning, and the line wove its way inside the big drugstore. Staffing shortages have hit pharmacies, either because employees are unwell or have quit altogether.

Prior to the epidemic, pharmacy technician Anecia Mascorro said the Sav-On Pharmacy where she works always had prescriptions available the next day. The hundreds of orders that are pouring in are now taking much longer to fill.

“The demand is insane – everyone isn’t obtaining their scripts in a timely manner, so they keep transferring to us,” Mascorro added.

As of Thursday, the virus had taken the lives of over 800 police and fire officers in Los Angeles, creating somewhat lengthier ambulance and fire response times.

Because of a virus-related personnel shortage, officials in New York City have forced to postpone or reduce trash and subway services. In recent days, nearly one-fifth of subway operators and conductors — 1,300 individuals — have been absent, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. According to Sanitation Commissioner Edward Grayson, about a quarter of the city sanitation department’s employees were out ill on Thursday.

“Everyone is working 12-hour shifts around the clock,” Grayson said.

The city’s fire service has likewise made adjustments to account for the increased absenteeism. Officials claimed that 28 percent of EMS workers were off ill on Thursday, compared to approximately 8% to 10% on a typical day. There were also twice as many firefighters than usual.

The ill rate at the police department, on the other hand, has decreased in the last week, according to officials.

According to claims from airport and TSA authorities, two checkpoints at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport’s main terminal were shut down because not enough Transportation Security Administration personnel showed up for work.

Meanwhile, despite widespread teacher absences, schools around the country attempted to sustain in-person instruction. Classes have been suspended in Chicago for the previous three days due to a tense impasse between the school administration and the teachers union over remote learning and COVID-19 safety standards. Nearly 900 educators and aides in San Francisco called in sick on Thursday.

In Hawaii, where public schools are administered by a single statewide agency, 1,600 teachers and staff were missing on Wednesday due to illness, vacation, or leave.

The state’s teachers union chastised school officials for failing to adequately prepare for the vacancy that would result. Counselors and security guards were being called in to “babysit a classroom,” according to Osa Tui Jr., president of the Hawaii State Teachers Association.

Tui remarked at a press conference, “That is completely unacceptable.” “What is the point of having this approach where there are so many instructors out and the department says, ‘Send your kid’ to a classroom that doesn’t have a teacher?”

Administrators have assisted in covering classrooms in New Haven, Connecticut, where hundreds of teachers have been out each day this week. Some teachers say that while they appreciate it, it might be perplexing for kids, adding to the physical and mental stress they are already experiencing as a result of the pandemic.

“We’ve already been put to the test. “Can the rubber band extend this far?” Leslie Blatteau, president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers, was asked this question.