UK may face food shortage amid ‘pingdemic’
LONDON: British supermarkets and suppliers warned on Thursday of possible food shortages due to staff self-isolating, as rising coronavirus cases threaten chaos ater the government controversially eased all restrictions earlier this week.
With millions of workers and schoolkids currently forced to stay home under COVID-19 tracing rules — in what has been dubbed a “pingdemic” ater the phone app used to contact, or ping, people who need to self-isolate — various industries are starting to suffer.
Newspapers showed photographs of empty supermarket shelves on Thursday, as missing staff at stores as well as in supply chains hit retailer’s operations — with some even closing outlets.
“We’ve kept all of our shops open throughout the pandemic, but now we have had to close one or two shops and reduce hours in others,” Richard Walker, managing director of frozen food retailer Iceland, told BBC radio.
“But that could get a lot worse a lot quicker, unless the country’s system is sorted out.”
Rod Mckenzie, managing director of policy at the Road Haulage Association ( RHA), said the UK was already struggling with a shortage of lorry drivers due to Brexit and that isolation issues were now “a recipe for chaos.”
The government on Monday eased all virus curbs, including the legal requirement to wear a mask in certain setings and social distancing rules, just as new cases are surging towards levels not seen since peaks in January.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson argues the country’s vaccination programme, which has jabbed nearly 70 per cent of adults with two doses, allows for the relaxation of measures.
But the surge in infections, averaging nearly 50,000 a day during the most recent week, has led to a dramatic increase in people told to self-isolate by tracing officials from the National Health Service (NHS). Johnson, finance minister Rishi Sunak, health secretary Sajid Javid and opposition Labour leader Keir Starmer are all among those currently isolating ater being contacted.
The prime minister is under pressure to widen the list of jobs that are exempt from the isolation rules, but has so far resisted and kept exemptions tightly restricted to key workers in critical industries.
Johnson’s spokesman said the government was “working closely” with impacted industries, and long-awaited updated guidance on how to exempt more workers from isolation was to be published later on Thursday.