With the explosion of contaminations also comes the explosion of contact cases and therefore quarantines … For several weeks in the United Kingdom, the number of positive cases has skyrocketed, flirting with 50,000 daily cases. Direct consequences: hundreds of thousands of contact cases are forced to isolate themselves for ten days.
In the week ending July 14 alone, more than 600,000 self-isolating notifications were sent. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Labor opposition leader Keir Starmer are both in quarantine. A massive isolation which threatens to paralyze the activity of the United Kingdom and handicaps its economy.
Empty shelves and interrupted metro
On the front page of almost all the press Thursday: photos of empty supermarket shelves. On Saturday, a line of the London Underground had to be interrupted for lack of sufficient staff. Some police forces have warned that response times would be extended. As the summer holidays approach, more than a million children have also been forced into self-isolation, forcing their parents to stay at home.
It is an epidemic within a pandemic, dubbed “pingdemic”, a pun between “ping” (receiving notification from the tracking application) and “epidemic”. At issue: the outbreak of contamination fueled by the highly contagious Delta variant in the United Kingdom, one of the countries in Europe most affected by the coronavirus with almost 129,000 deaths.
An “untenable” situation
The British Retail Consortium (BRC), a federation of distributors, urged the government to relax the rules relating to contact cases, denouncing an “untenable” situation with stores forced to close or reduce their opening hours, or struggling to fill them. rays. The Iceland supermarket chain said it would have to recruit 2,000 temporary workers to make up for the shortfall. Its managing director Richard Walker however called on the BBC customers not to engage in panic purchases, the empty shelves remaining according to him “isolated incidents”.
Motor hauliers, central in supplying stores, have also said they face a labor shortage, accentuating a chronic shortage attributed in part to Brexit, as have meat processors. Deliberately ignoring official guidelines, distributor Bidfood on Thursday called on its drivers to continue working even if notified, with a negative PCR test.
Certain essential workers exempted
The government, which on Monday lifted almost all health restrictions in place in England, is now in a hurry to act quickly to prevent this “pingdemic” from turning into chaos. While calling for respect for the rules, he promised to exempt some essential workers. This is already the case since Monday for vaccinated employees of the public health service (NHS) “in exceptional circumstances”, provided a negative test. A “very limited” list will be published on Thursday, according to Minister of Enterprises Kwasi Kwarteng, which the executive ruled out earlier this week.
A spokesperson for Boris Johnson assured that there was “no problem” in terms of supplies and that the food supply chain was “resilient”. He stressed that isolation was a “very important tool” against Covid-19. These precautions are even less understood as from August 16 the obligation to isolate themselves for fully vaccinated people should be lifted.