The lifting of almost all Corona restrictions in England almost two weeks ago - contrary to what many had forecast and feared - did not lead to a drastic increase in the number of infections - on the contrary.

But there is a fire on one front: instead of a pandemic, companies are complaining about a "pingdemic".

It leads to acute staff shortages in many industries.

Philip Plickert

Business correspondent based in London.

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The British use “pingdemie” to refer to the mass “ping” warnings from the Corona app of the NHS health service. If a cell phone owner comes too close to someone who has tested positive, the app sends a request to the cell phone to quarantine for up to ten days. More than 1.5 million Britons were sent into self-isolation in their own four walls, with an additional 170,000 every day.

Supermarkets fear empty shelves due to a lack of truck drivers.

The dairy group Arla, for example, which supplies the food trade with milk, had to cancel 600 deliveries a day.

Some trains and subways can no longer run due to a lack of train drivers.

Restaurants and pubs have to close because waiters and cooks cannot appear on duty.

In some factories, such as those of the automaker Nissan, the production lines were at a standstill from time to time because there were no workers.

Nursing staff is also becoming scarce in some hospitals.

Chronic staff shortages existed before

The British economy, on the other hand, is in a storm. Tony Danker, director of the employers' association CBI, called on Prime Minister Johnson to end the compulsion to self-isolate for those who are fully vaccinated. Instead of mass isolation, there should be mass tests. Johnson has already created exemption rules from the mandatory quarantine for certain professions, such as train drivers, drivers in the food industry, water, electricity and garbage workers. But the economy would like to replace the quarantine rules entirely with tests.

The rules do not change until mid-August, when fully vaccinated people are allowed to leave the house with a negative test despite "pings". However, the shortage of staff is now so acute that thousands of companies are urgently looking to hire replacement workers. The job search platform Adzuna says that the "pingdemie" has led to an increase in "urgent" job postings by 72,000, which is a good 6 percent of all job vacancies. Some companies are searching so desperately that they offer fairly high bonuses for newbies. With 5000 positions there is a "welcome bonus".

The supermarket chain Tesco, for example, promises new truck drivers £ 1,000. Even before the "pingdemic" there was a chronic shortage of personnel, especially in logistics. The supermarket chain Aldi has now increased the hourly wages for truck drivers up to 15.35 pounds and for night shifts up to 18.41 pounds in order to attract more interested parties. The Road Haulage Association speaks of up to 100,000 missing truck drivers on the island. The Brexit bloodletting of foreign drivers, but also 30,000 failed driving tests due to Corona have made a major contribution to this.