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LONDON (AP) – The UK government has sought to ease pressures on England’s food supply by exempting more than 10,000 workers from quarantine rules that have led to staff shortages and empty shelves and fears of buying food. panic.
However, he was criticized on Friday for being too rushed in lifting the coronavirus restrictions in England and for failing to do more to help other crucial sectors, such as transport, emergency services and the energy industry.
In an announcement Thursday night following mounting pressure from increasingly disgruntled retailers, he outlined plans for daily COVID-19 testing of critical food industry workers that will effectively enable those who test negative to continue working even if they have been instructed on their phone to self-isolate due to contact with someone infected with the virus.
The move, along with a limited relaxation of self-isolation rules for “critical workers” in other key sectors and vital public services, came as the government grew concerned about the impact. of the so-called “pingemia” in many key areas of the UK. economy.
Many critics claim that the National Health Service’s app, which has been downloaded by more than 26 million people in England and Wales, roughly half of the adult population, since its launch last September, has been unfairly distinguished. They say it’s a distraction from the UK being in the middle of a third wave of the pandemic due to the spread of the more contagious delta variant and the lifting of lockdown restrictions.
The app, they say, is only doing its job and self-isolation remains a key weapon in the fight against the virus.
With daily infections predicted by the government to at least double to 100,000 this summer, the number of people surveyed will inevitably increase, reaching more than one million per week.
“The best way to reduce the number of pings would be to reduce the number of infections and the idea that this is a problem with a faulty application that just needs to be removed is nonsense,” said Dr. Simon Clarke, Associate Professor. in Cellular Microbiology at the University of Reading.
Yet many individuals and businesses have taken matters into their own hands. There is growing evidence that people remove the app, turn off Bluetooth when going to areas, such as hospitals, where they could potentially be near someone who may have COVID. -19, or disable the contact search function.
Amid the resurgence of the virus across the UK, hundreds of thousands of people including UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson are self-isolating for 10 days after being told by the app that they have entered in close contact with someone who has tested positive for the virus.
It was mainly concerns about the food supply that prompted the government to change its approach as more and more workers, including crucial delivery drivers, had to self-isolate, resulting in scenes of empty supermarket shelves and panic buying fears by anxious consumers.
The government said it has identified priority locations, including the largest supermarket distribution centers, where testing will begin this week. The program will be expanded to as many as 500 locations next week, encompassing suppliers of staple foods such as bread and dairy products.
“Everyone working at these key strategic sites, distribution depots and manufacturing facilities will be able to use this program, and probably well over 10,000 people,” Environment Secretary George Eustice told Sky News on Friday.
The new policy has been well received by retailers, but many have said the government should consider presenting its previously announced plan to change the self-isolation rules on August 16, when people with a double bite will be exempt from the rules. ‘self-isolation.
“It is absolutely vital that the government makes up for lost time and rolls out this new program as quickly as possible,” said Helen Dickinson, Managing Director of the British Retail Consortium.
Along with measures to protect the food supply, the government on Thursday evening released guidelines providing limited exemptions for fully vaccinated critical workers in 16 sectors if their inability to work had a “major detrimental impact” or threatened national security. However, the guidelines have already caused some confusion within the sectors concerned.
Under the new guidelines, fully vaccinated employees providing services deemed critical could continue to work and avoid self-isolation if they were on a list maintained by authorities.
The government has said the policy is not a “blanket exemption” for all employees in an industry – for example, while the rail signaling operators on which the network depends may be granted an exemption, it is unlikely. that individual train drivers are.
The unions attacked the government for a ‘mess’ of their own by failing to consult before all lockdown restrictions in England were lifted.
“The government needs to be clear on who it classifies as critical workers,” Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the Congress of Trade Unions. “The current proposals do not reflect the real world because companies do not exist in isolation – they are part of complex supply chains.”
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