On a routine night shift, you might have a total of three officers working – the supervisor has six years experience, and the sole incident car has two constables – both with less than six months combined experience.

The patrol area is 6500sq km and the population is about 30,000. The vast geographic spread and health and safety risk that occurs from officers being spread so thin, is significant.

According to latest reports, Omicron – while very contagious, is found to affect the upper respiratory tract and not the lungs like previous variants. It’s found not to make people as sick.

In some places, they are saying this variant is showing us how to manage to live with COVID as it mutates into less dangerous strains and will become endemic in the community as a result.

We’re losing hugely experienced and valued staff across all our emergency services – they are a critical resource from sectors that are already under enormous pressure.