Rise of Omicron subvariants sends UK staff absence soaring

theguardian.com:

The rapid spread of Covid-19 infections in the past month has sent the number of workers taking sick leave soaring, according to official figures, making staff shortages even worse and forcing many employers to shut down parts of their business.

Undermining hopes that the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants spreading across the UK would mimic the relatively mild Omicron variant of the virus, employers have reported staff being “knocked out” and too ill to work from home.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that 1.1%, or more than 300,000 workers, took time off sick due to Covid in June.

The ONS, which provides a fortnightly report on the toll on the economy from the pandemic, said the figure for May was effectively zero because the number of incidents were small and the majority of employers failed to include it in their responses.

Employers’ organisations said the return of Covid was a further blow, in addition to ongoing staff shortages, transport disruption, the impact of inflation and a number of employees already off work with long Covid.

Tony Wilson, the head of the Institute for Employment Studies, said the recent strains of Covid were “not killing many people, but it is knocking them out”. He said the scale of the problem was not captured by official figures, which underestimated the disruption Covid was causing.

Hotels have reported shutting rooms, while restaurants have restricted bookings to reduce the number of customers they serve. Hospital and GP services have reported a huge loss of staff in recent weeks as the latest strains spread through the NHS.

According to the World Health Organization, the proportion of reported cases of BA.4 globally rose from 11% of cases in the week ending 25 June