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Regent Street... four days before Christmas: Crowds ABANDON the West End as self-policing Britons put THEMSELVES in lockdown by staying at home and avoiding pubs and restaurants

• Hospitality venues are facing a 'cataclysmic Christmas' as bosses call for urgent financial support
  TomTom data shows London had its quietest morning rush hour since the first day of third lockdown
  Night Time Industries Association says one third of venues fear closure within a month without help

By MARK DUELL and EMER SCULLY FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 07:13 GMT, 21 December 2021 | UPDATED: 17:38 GMT, 21 December 2021

London's West End was deserted again today with few shoppers to be seen on Regent Street and Oxford Street as hospitality leaders warned that pubs and restaurants face a 'cataclysmic' Christmas season.

The New West End Company said that footfall in London's shopping district was down by 17 per cent last weekend compared to the same period in 2019, and down by 5 per cent on the previous week. Across the entire week starting on December 13, shopper numbers were down by 29 per cent compared with two years ago. And figures from market research firm Springboard found shopper numbers fell 8.5 per cent in central London last weekend.

However there was something of a mixed picture throughout the day, with shopper numbers gradually building into the afternoon when Oxford Street looked much busier along with other city centres such as Winchester.

It comes as Britons are now putting themselves into a pre-Christmas lockdown with nearly half saying the Government's current Covid-19 measures do not go far enough, with just four days to go until December 25.



https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ARITY.html

New York City has modified its plans for its fully vaccinated New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square, limiting the crowd to roughly 15,000 people, nearly four times less than the non-pandemic crowd, and requiring masks for all amid an omicron surge that's spawning unprecedented increases in COVID infections.

As eye-popping as the numbers have been in recent days, Thursday afternoon's report from the state was still stunning -- 38,835 positive tests in just one day, an increase of 10,000 from the day before. Of those, 22,208 were in New York City alone, orders of magnitude greater than anything either the city or state faced before omicron (although a true comparison to the number of cases during the initial COVID surge in spring 2020 is impossible because tests were very limited at the time).

The Labor Department recently reported that 4.5 million American workers - a full three percent - voluntarily left their jobs in November, tying the record set in September. Among private-sector companies, the quit rate was 3.4 percent, also a record.

Meanwhile, November was also the sixth straight month in which national job openings topped 10 million as unemployment rates continue to drop, meaning there are currently about 1.5 available jobs for each of the nation’s 6.9 million unemployed workers.

Texas continues to account for a substantial portion of the national resignation wave, with the rate of voluntary quits consistently nearing the state’s record, which was set in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.

All told, roughly 450,000 Texas workers quit their jobs in October, according to the Labor Department. Only Colorado had a larger share of its workforce voluntarily leave jobs over the same period.

Ikea cuts sick pay for unvaccinated UK staff who are self-isolating
Retailer says it will pay £96.35 a week rather than average £400 but will consider mitigating circumstances

Jasper Jolly
Sun 9 Jan 2022 19.14 GMT

Furniture retailer Ikea has cut sick pay for unvaccinated UK staff who are forced to self-isolate because of close contact with someone with Covid-19, it has emerged.

Unvaccinated workers at Ikea are only eligible for statutory sick pay of £96.35 a week during 10 days of isolation, compared with weekly pay of more than £400 before tax for an average worker on the shop floor.

However, managers at the retailer, which employs 10,000 staff in the UK, will consider mitigating circumstances.

Some employers have experimented with incentives for workers to get vaccinated, including free time off during work hours, but Ikea and utility company Wessex Water, have joined supermarket Morrisons in imposing a financial cost on those without an exemption who decline to be vaccinated.



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... id-contact?

Just as the U.S. has finally turned the corner on a wave of COVID-19 cases caused by the omicron variant, multiple countries in Europe are showing an increase in infections – fueling concerns about the possibility of another global surge.

The United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and Italy were among those that saw an upswing in cases this past week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Germany saw a spike in cases from a low of 1,570 cases per million people on March 2 to 2,330 cases per million people as of March 12, and cases in the Netherlands are up from a recent low of 1,956 cases per million people Feb. 27 up to 3,955 cases per million people March 12, the data shows.

Among the countries whose data has charted an increased in cases, some have also seen a rise in hospitalizations, including Ireland, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.