Free of COVID restrictions, England's contact tracing "pingdemic" threatens shortages
22 July 2021
Supermarkets and wholesalers in the U.K. are beginning to face shortages after the government's official health app told hundreds of thousands of workers to self-isolate after contact with someone with COVID-19, Reuters reports.
Why it matters: The "pingdemic" disruptions pose a new challenge to the highly vaccinated U.K., which is reporting more than 50,000 new COVID-19 cases per day as the Delta variant tears through the country.
- U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson lifted virtually all pandemic restrictions in England on July 19, threatening to exacerbate the problem further.
- 87% of adults have received at least one vaccine dose and 68% have received two doses, per Reuters. 60% of all COVID-19 hospitalizations are among unvaccinated people, according to health officials.
Driving the news: The National Health Service's contact tracing app that notifies people to isolate for 10 days after COVID-19 exposure has tarnished Johnson's plan to fully reopen England's economy.
- "We're very concerned about the situation," Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said, per Reuters. "We're monitoring the situation."
- The supermarket group Iceland said it closed a number of stores due to staff shortages.
- "We have a structural issue with [a shortage of] HGV drivers for a variety of different reasons, but of course the 'pingdemic' has made it even worse," Iceland's managing director Richard Walker told ITV. "We are starting to see some availability issues."
- Sainsbury's, the U.K.'s second-largest supermarket group, said customers should be able to find the products they want, but perhaps not every brand.
Between the lines: To avoid the disruption, many individuals have deleted the contract tracing app from their phones, per Reuters.
Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times
Section2Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.
Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.
The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.
- The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.
What the transcripts say:
- Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
- The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
- Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."
Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.