Covid testing scheme allows ‘pinged’ food industry workers to avoid self-isolation

Boris Johnson’s government has announced a new testing scheme for food industry workers, allowing staff deemed critical to the supply chain to avoid self-isolation if “pinged” by the NHS Covid app.

Following a meeting with supermarket bosses on Thursday, ministers said sites for daily testing would be set up at supermarket distribution centres to allow staff to keep coming to work if they test negative.

Environment secretary George Eustice said: “We are working closely with industry to allow staff to go about their essential work safely with daily testing.”

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said the scheme would be rolled out to around 500 sites next week, allowing around 10,000 staff to avoid the “pingdemic”.

But the testing scheme is not being extended to staff inside supermarket stores at this stage – with the focus on distribution depots and manufacturing sites.

Health secretary Sajid Javid said the daily contact testing of workers in the food sector “will help to minimise the disruption caused by rising cases in the coming weeks, while ensuring workers are not put at risk”.

It comes as the government revealed new guidance allowing “named” individuals in critical jobs to avoid self-isolation, as business leaders warned that the economy could “grind to a halt” due to the so-called pingdemic.

The new guidance says that “a limited number of named workers” may be able to ignore the 10-day quarantine rules if self-isolation would result in “serious disruption to critical services”.

But the policy only applies to named workers if their employer has received a letter from the relevant government department. “This is not a blanket exemption for all workers in a sector,” the guidance said.

Supermarkets, haulage firms and manufacturers have reported difficulties keeping operations going, as the numbers of workers told to stay home after they were pinged topped 600,000 in a week.

Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, said she welcomed the government’s plan to expand testing to release food industry staff from self-isolation.

“Retailers are working closely with government to identify hundreds of key distribution sites that will benefit from the new daily contact testing scheme,” said Ms Dickinson. "It is absolutely vital that government makes up for lost time and rolls out this new scheme as fast as possible.”

Hannah Essex, co-executive director of the British Chambers of Commerce, said the testing announcement would be a relief to some businesses, but would “leave many more still facing critical staff shortages and lost revenue as the number of people being asked to isolate remains high”.

Downing Street has warned the public not to panic buy, insisting the supply chain remained strong. But the founder and owner of one of the country’s largest food producers predicted “major food shortages” ahead.

Ranjit Singh Boparan, of the 2 Sisters Food Group, said the government needed to do more or face the “most serious food shortages that this country has seen in over 75 years”.

He said Brexit-related issues and Covid troubles were already causing problems before the pingdemic. “Since May this year the operating environment has deteriorated so profoundly I can see no other outcome than major food shortages in the UK.”

Ministers have ignored pleas from Tory MPs to bring forward planned changes to self-isolation rules for the rest of the country.

The government is sticking to its 16 August timetable for freeing double-vaccinated adults from the requirement to quarantine if they are “pinged” by the app.

Lockdown-sceptic Mark Harper told the Commons: “The danger is large numbers of people will either delete or stop listening to the app, and then we get to 16 August they won’t be getting the advice to take a PCR test. We will have actually made ourselves less safe.”