Bouncing in and out of isolation
Household contacts of Covid cases are causing more disruption to some businesses than the virus itself
Household contacts of Covid-19 cases are causing more disruption to some southern businesses rather than the virus itself.
Many businesses are having issues not with its employees contracting Covid-19, but rather with employees having to isolate due to being a household contact.
Southland chef Ethan Flack lives in a household of five family members. He first went into isolation about six weeks ago when his brother-in-law tested positive for Covid-19.
Then on Thursday he was required to go back into isolation for a second time because his wife had tested positive.
Because his line of work was not an essential service, Flack could not just self-test with a rapid-antigen test to be able to return to work.
‘‘I guess the tricky thing with . . . my line of work is it is very much hands-on within the community or within a team environment where you’re delivering a food product.
‘‘So, obviously that has a personal impact of not being able to do that, as well as a broader impact on the team that you’re involved with having to again reduce what they do because of the staffing issues,’’ he said.
Flack is still yet to test positive for Covid-19. He knew of a few other people who were in the same boat as him of having to repeat isolation despite not contracting the virus or having contracted the virus on the fifth day during their second round of isolation, he said.
Flack thought this was affecting all industries. ‘‘You’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do to keep people safe,’’ he said.
Business South chief executive Mike Collins said quite a few businesses had been disrupted because of household contacts needing to isolate.
While Collins did not have any specific stats of the impact, he said people had been calling to say there had been a need to have repeat periods of isolation.
‘‘A few businesses just explained the added stress putting on those that can work; because they’re working under a lot more pressure because they don’t have their colleague there as much,’’ he said.
Particularly in the hotel industry, Collins heard that there had been a lot of sharing of jobs. ‘‘So people who work in the kitchens are now also doing the cleaning of the rooms as well and people in the bar.
‘‘They’re rotating the roles around more,’’ he said.
Invercargill-based HW Richardson Group employs 2500 staff across 48 business brands and six different sectors across Aotearoa and in Australia.
Group chief executive Anthony Jones said originally operations in the Auckland offices were affected but it had trickled down to the operations in Southland.
‘‘The Southland area has become the largest concentration of cases across the business,’’ he said.
The business saw its peak at about 95 people per day having to take time off either because they had Covid-19 or were a household contact, Jones said.
‘‘It’s sort of hovering around 70 people at the moment.
‘‘It is starting to tail off.
‘‘We saw it spiking at the back of Easter and Anzac Day but it is tailing back down,’’ he said.
Jones said 25%, or 625 people, of the company’s total workforce had been impacted by the virus, and 30% of those cases were in the Southland region. ‘‘There are 21% of those that were isolating rather than positives,’’ he said.
The reason for the company’s Southland businesses being affected the most was because the highest density of its workforce were based in Southland, he said. ‘‘So, the impact has been quite significant for us as a business,’’ Jones said.
The Batch Cafe´ co-owner Kate French said yesterday was the third time the cafe´ had to be completely closed because of household isolation. ‘‘The biggest disruption has been household contacts, no-one has Covid-19 in our team but they’re isolating.
‘‘The household contact thing is causing us way more disruption than Covid-19,’’ she said.
The business has had to reduce hours or offer fewer food options on other days it is open.