UKHospitality pushes for official changes to self-isolation policy

The official guidance on self-isolation for hospitality workers must be reviewed due to the huge staff shortages being caused by the ‘pingdemic’, according to UKHospitality’s director of strategic affairs Tony Sophoclides.

Speaking on MCA’s The Conversation he said the message from government was that the official guidance is under review but that the trade body is unaware of any imminent changes.

“The isolation policy and the app itself were developed in very different times before the vaccine roll out and the impact was certainly lower,” he said. At the time it was introduced there was less evidence on the efficacy of lateral flow tests and the test to release schemes that appear to have worked well in setting such as schools.

“It’s got to stay under review. It simply has to. We are getting teams blanket pinged and seeing venues closed down as a result,” added Sophoclides.

Also on the panel, Mark Derry, executive chairman, Brasserie Bar Co, and a non-executive director at New World Trading Company (NWTC), said there was a definite geographical difference in the numbers getting pinged across the sites of those two businesses, but that they were both being effected.

“New World has lost a considerable amount of trading days, shuffling the pack to try and get people into one place as people have been pinged across the estate,” he said. “Blanc has really held on by its fingernails. Last week I would suggest we could have done more trade but we simply did not have sufficient people to do the job.”

UKHospitality has been pressing the government to introduce a ‘test to release’ scheme for hospitality workers so that they can avoid having to self-isolate for 10 days every time they are notified of exposure to coronavirus by the NHS Test and Trace app.