Jul 13th, 2022
2 mins
On 13th July Rupert Ashby attended a Defra-run Food Resilience Industry Forum (FRIF). John Simpson of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) updated attendees on the current situation with Covid. The UK’s dominant strain is currently BA.5 which is proving to be highly infectious, but to date not as severe as previous strains in most cases. There were mixed reports from businesses at the meeting on staff absences resulting from this strain with the UKHSA estimating that 4% of the population currently have it with the peak expected in the next week or so.
If you are currently experiencing challenges with covid in your business, do let Simon Brentnall and Carla Brown at the BFFF know so we can inform Defra of issues on your behalf.
Also as there are now no legal requirements for staff around covid, Defra and the HAS provided the following guidelines in two links for businesses around staff with symptoms or testing positive.
