Boris Johnson Covid-19 Presser by Number 10 licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

 

Boris Johnson’s plan to ‘Live with Covid’ includes the scrapping of legal self isolation from Thursday, and free universal testing to end from April.

For some, this news comes as a long awaited sense of freedom, but for others it doesn’t seem as simple.

Paul Plowman, from Marble Brewery, said: “We’ll wait with bated breath, if it does lead to creating a better footfall for businesses then we look forward to it with trepidation”.

Photo Credits: https://twitter.com/marblebrewers

When asked about asking his staff to continue testing, Plowman said: “Yeah, definitely.

“If were trying to make sure the workforce is safe, we have to get people to test, but then if you have to pay for those tests then people just won’t bother.

“It opens up more questions than answers for us about getting back to normal”.

Although some businesses have already been hit hard by the last 18 months, and this news come much too late for them.

Gita Carroll, owner of Ivy Mount Boutique, Eccles, said they were open just five months before having to convert to a B&B service.

Carroll said: We’ve gone from nine staff to zero, after 18 months our staff were fed up.

“It’s just not worth it, we’re just not picking up at the moment, it’s ridiculous how bars and pubs can open, but we followed all the rules about the rooms and they never let us open, we haven’t really got a business”.

She also added that she doesn’t think the Government have been fair on Manchester as a whole, not just her business, as Liverpool and London were allowed to open when Manchester was not, and that they favoured the South to the North.

The announcement comes after a large in crease in Covid deaths, with 38,000 positive cases, with only 15 being recorded on the 21st of February

Here as some of the ways that Covid-19 has affected the business sector:

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