The College of Policing has worked with the Police Federation and the Home Office to create an abridged syllabus for probationer training across the country so that new recruits can be put on the front line quicker.

The gaps in the usual training programme will be filled once the COVID 19 emergency eases, the Parliamentary Home Affairs Committee was told yesterday.

Simon Kempton the Federation’s national lead on the virus said the abridged training package worked by giving recruits the “basic skills they need to keep themselves and their colleagues safe.”

This would include training in the Theft Act and Public Order Act  - which is considered vital everyday legislation that officers need to use  - but other legislation covering fraud would be deferred to later.

They will then be paired with a more qualified colleague who has at least two years’ service.

“As we start to lose staff through abstractions we are going to need as many officers as possible," Sgt Kempton told the committee.

There might also be a need for chief constables to prioritise some areas of policing over others.

But he said ‘essential’ services to be retained at all costs would be firearms teams, the investigation of offences where there was a danger of losing evidence and 999 response capability.

The national sickness rate across all forces is currently around 13% but could change very quickly the committee was told.

Police Superintendents Association president Paul Griffiths said: "The absence rate is approximately 13% across the whole of the national establishment and that includes police officers and staff.

"Those will be sick, some of those will be self-isolating because of symptoms and some of them will have caring responsibilities.

"Most of them are trying as best as possible to see whether they can work at home, which gives you an idea of the solidarity that continues across the police service in trying to do their very best in extreme circumstances."

He said no forces had so far raised their absence rate as a "risk in terms of service provision" and the numbers seemed to be "plateauing off".

But he added: "We are acutely aware that this could change at any point and quite frankly we don't know what the impact will be if this disease continues to spread particularly into members of the police family."

Bedfordshire Police chief constable Garry Forsyth said forensics company Eurofins was due to make some antigen tests available for police forces in his region in the next two to three weeks and NHS slots for tests might be made available in the same time frame.

Meanwhile Sgt Kempton said all officers should be issued with spit hoods as a precaution against being spat on or bitten.

Currently some forces only carry the equipment in certain vehicles or issue them to custody staff but Sgt Kempton said they were just as important for patrol officers given the current risks of infection.

“I’ve got just as much change of being spat at on the street as in custody,” he told the Home Affairs Committee yesterday. “Now more than ever we need those spit guards in the pocket of every single officer.

“We have some really tight guidelines about where they can be used and how they can be used and there is rightly a huge amount of oversight. Now that is in place it is time for every officer to get one.”