Covid cases have been “rising sharply” in food and drink workplaces, as many face confusion over the lack of self-isolation guidelines.
A year on from so-called Freedom Day, when the government lifted most restrictions, the industry’s Defra ‘war room’ heard some food factories were reporting their first substantial spikes in absence rates for months, with the highly infectious BA.5 variant believed to be behind the rise.
However, businesses reported absence levels were still “nowhere near” the 2020 peak, when some firms saw over 20% of staff off work.
“Absence rates are rising again due to the new variant. There are mixed views as to how much of a problem the absences are,” a source said.
“Some are saying ‘let’s just get on with this’ but there is some confusion over the lack of guidance. We were basically told that there are no rules and it’s up to individual businesses to decide what happens – for example, if people who have Covid want to come into work because legally they are allowed to.”
However, another source said there was little appetite for new guidance on self-isolation. “People don’t want to know. They want to get on with life. It’s a very different situation to even nine months ago.”
Meanwhile, it also emerged that among the clinically vulnerable groups who self-isolated in the pandemic, up to a third of those workers never returned to work, with many opting to take early retirement or move to jobs where they can work from home.
“There are not exactly numbers available, but it’s thought we could be talking about a substantial number of workers, particularly on the retail side,” said a source.
At one point, Tesco alone had 16,000 staff classed as clinically vulnerable self-isolating
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