Marks & Spencer could reduce opening hours after NHS app tells more staff to self-isolate

As coronavirus cases rise, latest figures show the Test and Trace app has pinged more than 500,000 people in a week

Marks & Spencer, Oxford Street, London (Getty Images)

Marks & Spencer may be forced to reduce its opening hours due to the rise in the number of staff having to self-isolate after being pinged by the NHS Test and Trace app.

The latest NHS statistics show that more than 500,000 alerts telling people to self-isolate were sent out to people in the week ending 7 July, which is a 46 per cent increase on the previous week.

As the number of coronavirus cases continues to grow – 48, 161 new cases were recorded in the UK on Sunday – retailers have warned that supply chains could soon face disruption as more and more staff are unable to go to work.

M&S’s chief executive Steve Rowe told The Times that the number of staff who are having to self-isolate is increasing week on week.

“Our Covid cases are roughly doubling every week and the pinging level is about three to one of Covid cases, so we’re seeing that growing exponentially,” he said.

Estimating that at least 20 per cent of all retail sector staff will be absent at some point within the next month, Rowe said the supermarket is considering reducing its opening hours.

“If there’s shortages we’ll have to manage it by changing hours of stores, reducing hours. Where the industry will see the pain is in the supply chain, because logistics runs tight anyway to be efficient,” he said.

His comments come a day before Iceland announced that it is having to close some of its sites because more than 1,000 staff members are self-isolating.

The retailer’s chief executive, Richard Walker, told the BBC on Monday that the absences account for four per cent of its total workforce. It has also reduced the opening hours of some stores.

“The concern is that as this thing rises exponentially as we’ve just been hearing. It could get a lot worse a lot quicker,” he said.

To offset the absences, Iceland is hiring additional employees. “In fact, we’ve just announced employing an additional 2,000 people on top of that to give us a deeper pool of labour, because so many people are now getting pinged,” Walker added.

Some industry groups have called for the government to change the guidelines so that those who have received both doses of the coronavirus vaccine do not need to self-isolate when pinged by the app.

However, the government has insisted that isolation requirements for anyone who has been in contact with someone who has the virus will remain in place until August 16.

One such group, the British Retail Consortium (BRC), has warned that the situation will worsen now that all social distancing restrictions have been lifted.

“We are already seeing a serious impact on retail operations as a result of staff having to self-isolate and this will only get worse right across the economy, as cases are already rising fast and the final restrictions are eased,” Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the BRC told The Independent.

“Given the effectiveness of the current vaccine roll-out programme, the government should pull forward the August 16th date so that people who are fully vaccinated or have a negative test are not forced to needlessly quarantine when they are contacted by track and trace,” she said.

The government had previously hinted at reducing the “sensitivity” of the app, with transport secretary Grant Shapps suggesting that it could be “tailored” to align with the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions on Monday.

However, Downing Street has now confirmed that no changes to the app will be made. When asked whether the app is working as it should be, prime minister Boris Johnson’s official spokesman told reporters: “That’s correct.”