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Payments aimed at encouraging healthcare workers to take on risky shifts in full personal protective equipment will end next month, as hospitals reach a staffing crisis point and COVID-19 hospitalisations are projected to hit a record high.

Victoria’s peak body for public hospitals is pushing the state government for an urgent extension of its surge allowance, which was introduced last October as an incentive for nurses and paramedics to work in high-risk coronavirus settings.

Hospitals across the state are calling healthcare workers back from their annual leave in a desperate attempt to fill shifts.

Victorian Healthcare Association chief executive Tom Symondson said the state and federal governments must act urgently to secure the workforce as Omicron infections rose exponentially.

“It doesn’t matter how many ambulances, hospital beds and aged care rooms we physically have in Victoria. Without staff, they won’t function,” he said. “Omicron is going to test Victoria’s health system like no other event in recent history.”

The association says the Victorian government must extend its commitment to the surge allowance – which equates to about $60 per shift or payments of up to $300 a week – beyond February.

Critical Care Nurses College Victorian president Rose Jaspers said some nurses and ward staff who were caring for coronavirus patients in hospitals were still being locked out of the payments.

She said among those not receiving the payments were nurses working in coronavirus streaming hospitals, including all nurses in the private system, and ward staff employed by third parties to help transfer coronavirus patients.

“There has to be parity,” said Ms Jaspers, who wrote to the Premier late last year about the underpayment of some critical care nurses.

The calls come after the number of COVID-19 patients in Victorian hospitals hit a new high and as Ambulance Victoria enacted a “code-red” alert early on Tuesday, the second time the disaster protocol has been needed in Melbourne in the past week.

Victorian Ambulance Union secretary Danny Hill said that at one point during the code-red alert, 135 cases were listed as “pending” in the service’s system.

“Of that [135], around 20 were patients who required an ambulance under lights-and-sirens conditions,” he said.

“So it could be a chest pain, it could be a baby being born … where we really need to be there within 15 minutes, but there isn’t even an ambulance to dispatch at all, let alone one close.”

Premier Daniel Andrews said about 4000 hospital staff and more than 400 ambulance workers were currently unable to work because of coronavirus requirements, and he warned the figure could get higher.

“There’ll be more, there will be other people who haven’t yet told us that they’re not available,” he said. “It could be upwards of 5000, maybe even more.”

There are 861 COVID-19 patients in hospital, with 117 in intensive care and 27 on ventilators.

Mr Symondson said governments should expand the category of workers who qualify for the surge payment to all healthcare staff in patient-facing roles, including aged care workers, community health centre staff and those working in high-risk accommodation programs for people who have tested positive to the disease.

A state Department of Health spokeswoman said the government “will continue to assess settings to best support our front-line health workforce” during the peak period of the coronavirus outbreak.

The government has invested $255 million into the surge support allowance and tripled funding to its wellbeing support program throughout the pandemic.

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