Pingdemic hits fashion as stores forced to close

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Fashion retailers are being forced to close shops and the opening of a new department store has been delayed as the ‘pingdemic’ forces workers to isolate.

Fashion retailer Seasalt was forced to close five of its stores for one day each last week due to workers being pinged by the NHS Test and Trace app and forced to self-isolate, Retail Week can reveal.

A Seasalt spokesman said: “We had to close five stores last week for a total of five lost trading days. This was a precautionary measure because staff were self-isolating.

“As has been Seasalt’s policy throughout the pandemic, our priority has been the safety of our customers and staff.”

While Retail Week understands that absentee levels at the retailer due to the pingdemic are less than the 20% being reported by some food retailers, such as Iceland, there is growing concern that the issue will get worse before it gets better.

Another retailer with extensive non-food operations described the increasing strain being put on its business by the combined factors of the ongoing HGV driver shortage, the pingdemic and staff going on “much-needed” holidays at this time as “a perfect storm”.

“Shops will be closing unless the government lets staff take a test and get back to work if they’re negative,” warned a spokeswoman. “We need progress on this within days, not weeks.”

While the pingdemic is affecting retailers and their staff directly, it is also hampering the opening of new retail sites.

The phased opening of the newly restored Bobby & Co department store in Bournemouth, which was set to begin on August 7, has been pushed back to September 9 due to builders working on the project being forced to self-isolate.

While much of the coverage of the unfolding crisis has been about the threat to food supply and increasingly empty supermarket shelves, the issue is beginning to affect retailers across other categories as well.

Arts and craft specialist The Works chief executive Gavin Peck told Retail Week he knew of retailers being forced to operate with reduced store hours due to the pandemic and said he’d been forced to “restaff [stores] at short notice”.

“We’re in a good position and all stores are trading, but you read some of the forecasts and it does sound as though that’s likely to only get more challenging in the weeks and months ahead,” he added.

Last week, a record 618,903 alerts were sent to Test and Trace app users in England last week, according to the BBC.

Today grocers such as Tesco, Waitrose and Iceland attributed growing gaps on their shelves to workers being forced to self-isolate.

British Retail Consortium head of food and sustainability Andrew Opie said: “The ongoing pingdemic is putting increasing pressure on retailers’ ability to maintain opening hours and keep shelves stocked. Government needs to act fast.”

The rising wave of retail staff being forced to self-isolate comes as cases surge in the aftermath of the government dropping all legal Covid restrictions.

On Monday prime minister Boris Johnson announced that critical workers who have been fully vaccinated for at least two weeks would not need to follow self-isolation restrictions.

However, on Tuesday the government refused to publish a list of critical workers, insisting that businesses would need to follow government guidance.

In a u-turn today, business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said the government would in fact publish a list of critical workers exempt from self-isolation. He said he was “very concerned” by the increasing numbers of people being pinged.