Supermarket chain shuts stores and cuts hours due to ‘ping-demic’
THE boss of Welsh supermarket chain Filco has been forced to close stores and reduce hours because of the number of staff who are having to self-isolate.
The company has nine stores in Port Talbot, the Vale of Glamorgan, and Bridgend and has between 15 and 20% of its staff off after being ‘pinged’.
Director Matthew Hunt said: “The problem seems to be growing as we progress through this period. It is a challenge, so we have had to reduce and close two stores within the past couple of weeks.
“It does seem to be a growing problem and it is very difficult to navigate your way safely through it.”
He said that very few staff had actually had coronavirus, but he said that there was confusion about getting a notification from the app and being contacted by Track and Trace.
“We have been getting very quickly upon the situation and take any action required,” he told BBC Radio Wales. “There is a lot of confusion and the impact it is having on our stores, is not just ourselves.
“We are the end product of a supply chain. Each stakeholder within that chain is facing a similar problem. If you take 20% out of the haulage system, which is already stretched, and you take 20% out of the production, it really does magnify. By the time you see the impact of that in a supermarket, it can be quite stark.
“We have had deliveries cancelled, which has been a real challenge for us, especially as the weather has changed and demand rises. I do fear there is going to be some shortages but we have been quite resourceful in how we have sourced our products.”
He added: “A consequence of opening up and putting people close together is that infection will move around. I think the hope is that the vaccine programme is reducing the threat to health of those that catch it.
“I think the expectation is it moves from being a significant health threat to a much lesser one, at which point you are treating it like a common cold was before this all started. The world should be able to carry on if you get an infection.”
Many businesses have continued to call for reform of self-isolation rules.
The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) said “speed was of the essence” as crippling staff shortages threatened to close supermarkets and bring car production lines to a halt.
The government plans to loosen self-isolation rules in England on 16 August but the CBI said doublejabbed people should be able to escape the 10-day quarantine now, while others could return to work after a test.
Marks & Spencer chief executive, Steve Rowe, told the Sunday Times that the number of Covid cases was doubling every week, with three times as many staff being pinged.
“If there’s shortages we’ll have to manage it by changing hours of stores, reducing hours,” Mr Rowe said.
Nick Mackenzie, chief executive of pub chain Greene King, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “This is a problem and I think it could get worse. It is disruptive to the business.
“We had to close, in the last seven days, 33 pubs due to lack of staff because of self-isolation. Across the industry we think it is about one in five of our team members who have been affected by this and therefore it is causing a real issue for us setting up business on a daily basis – we’re having to have shortened hours in some circumstances.”
Mr Mackenzie, whose group runs 2,500 pubs, hotels and restaurants across the UK, called on the Government to expand its test and release scheme to allow staff who test negative for coronavirus to return to work after being “pinged”.
Humphrey Cobbold, chief executive of Puregym, told the programme: “We’ve been talking for a while internally about living in the ‘United Pingdom’ and it has become a huge challenge for individuals and businesses.
“Up to 25%, in some areas, of our staff have been asked to self-isolate – we’ve been able, through flexibility and sharing of labour, to keep sites open so far but it has been a very close call in certain circumstances, and I would echo that I think there is a different way of reacting to the pings for vaccinated people and using lateral flow tests that would help industries of all sorts a great deal.”
On Monday, Nadhim Zahawi suggested there would be no changes to the NHS Covid app’s sensitivity after calls for it to be dialled down amid a shortage of staff in some sectors.
Asked what could be done to change the app, the vaccines minister told Sky News: “I think the right thing to do is to continue to clinically advise people, with that sensitivity, that they have come into contact with people who have tested positive.
“The difference now is we’ve got almost 88% of people with one dose and 68% of people with two doses, so we can take decisions like we’ve just done with NHS and social care staff, we can make decisions that on August 16 anyone who is double vaccinated doesn’t need to then isolate if they are pinged and don’t test positive for Covid. Those changes are happening because of the vaccination programme.”