A contact tracing app telling people in the UK to isolated for 10 days after coming into contact with any Covid-19 sufferers has been keeping some critical staff away from work. This has hit the food industry where some towns have been seeing problems with pricessing or moving food to the stores, resulting in some unhappy customers being greeted with bare shelves.
The pings come when the contact tracing app detects the user has been in contact with someone who tested positive for the virus. This has led some to simply uninstall the app. While over 86% of the population have had at least a partial vaccine and 68% havrbeen fully vaccinated, the new strain called “delta” is getting vaccinated people sick as well.
The 7 day average of new cases is up to 45k per day while at the height of the pandemic in January the the average got to 59k per day. Some 5.6 million people in the UK have had Covid-19 while 129k have died. But the current death rate is far below what it had been with 84 deaths per day being the average while it reached around 1400 per day in January of 2021.
But while the number of deaths is way down, and not expected to appreciably rise, disruptions to supply chains are still likely to occur here and there, as they are in the UK. And the differences can be dramatic, with places like London lacking a few items, like bottled water, while some towns saw a more dramatic supply distribution. There are concerns, however, it could get worse and, as word of the problem spreads, so too does hoarding.
Being prepared in these times requires a set aside of at least a few weeks to a month worth of basic nutrition needa and household supplies as disruptions of the supply chain are unlikely to become a thing of the past any time soon. The impetus for local and home grown food production is becoming greater. Even without a high death rate, outbreaks of the virus, even among the vaccinated, who are far less likely to die, can and will cause problems.
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