Novichok ‘false alarm’ will hit Salisbury’s recovery hard

THE evacuation of a Salisbury pizzeria after a couple collapsed will hit the city hard in its recovery from the Novichok nerve agent attack, its council leader said yesterday.

A man, aged 42, and his 30-year-old female dining companion – said to be Russian – were taken to hospital with suspected poisoning on Sunday night.

Wiltshire Police ruled out Novichok – the nerve agent used in the assassination attempt on Sergei Skripal – but were unable to say yesterday why the couple collapsed in Prezzo restaurant.

Matthew Dean, the Salisbury city council leader, said: “Footfall remains significantly down with the tourist sector in particular depressed and that is causing hardship for some businesses. We need to move on and demonstrate we are open for business but false alarms like this impede that progress.”

Salisbury Business Improvement District figures showed visitor numbers were down 12 per cent since March when Col Skripal and his daughter Yulia were attacked, with spikes in March and April and again in July and August after Dawn Sturgess died after coming into contact with the agent.

The restaurant remained shut yesterday with a cordon around it.

The Skripals dined in another Italian restaurant, Zizzi, prior to collapsing on a bench near a shopping centre.

Amanda Worne, 47, from Arundel, West Sussex, was in Prezzo when the restaurant was evacuated. She said: “We were told by police the two people involved in the incident were Russian.”

She described how the man had collapsed in the lavatory while his blonde dining companion had been acting in an agitated state.