Published: April 9, 2021
Cited: Pakistan Point
MOSCOW, April 9 (Sputnik), Jonathan Rowson – The UK government’s plan to gradually reopen the economy through the rollout of free rapid lateral flow COVID-19 tests and a domestic vaccine passport scheme may push more businesses in the ailing hospitality and tourism sectors to the brink of ruin, business leaders and legal experts told Sputnik, amid growing calls for the government to provide greater clarity.
England’s third national lockdown legally came into force in the first week of January, as the government sought to curb the spread of a new highly infectious COVID-19 variant first identified in the county of Kent.
The tough measures have helped to rapidly curb the rate of new infections, as just 3,030 positive tests were registered by the Department of Health and Social Care on Thursday. At the start of the year, health officials were confirming in excess of 60,000 new cases daily.
As a result of the fall in infections, the UK government has looked for ways to begin steadily easing the lockdown measures. The government’s “stay at home” order was lifted on March 29, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson unveiled a road map for the eventual reopening of pubs, restaurants, hairdressers and other non-essential businesses that were forced to shut their doors as a result of the lockdown measures.
Starting Monday, non-essential shops and hairdressers in England will be allowed to reopen. Pubs and restaurants will be permitted to serve customers in an outdoor setting from this date, although these businesses must wait until May 17 before reopening their indoor areas.
“I will be going to the pub myself and cautiously but irreversibly raising a pint of beer to my lips,” Johnson joked during a Downing Street press conference on Monday.
Speakers
Alison Magee-Barker, the owner of the hospitality-focused AJ Lakes Consultancy firm.
“There are false positives. In theory the rapid flow testing for everyone sounds like a great idea, it sounds fantastic, because we can get COVID-19 at bay so to speak. However, the fact it is not conclusive and it is not 100 percent correct means we have a major problem in the fact that businesses could have to close when nobody in reality has had a positive COVID-19 test,” Magee-Barker said.
Jasmine Birtles, the director of popular financial information site MoneyMagpie.
“For a start, it has been shown over and over that the more a population is tested, the more they find infections because of the false positives. In fact false positives account for at least 20 percent (more like 50 percent according to some researchers) of all results. If this is repeated across the whole of England then there will be millions of false positives,” Birtles said.
Rachel Fletcher, a partner and head of crime and regulatory at UK-based law firm Slater Heelis.
“It would be very difficult to enforce vaccine passports at venues and certain events under current legislation and to enforce this with criminal sanctions would certainly need changes to existing law. We don’t know as yet if criminalization is being proposed but we do know that the track and trace system has widely been considered by many to be a failure and the invasion to privacy of citizens is unprecedented and would be hard to justify again,” Fletcher said.
Jonathan Rowson 