The rapid spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant is playing havoc with the shelves of your suburban supermarket.
The range of groceries, especially meat and dairy, is thinning out in many stores and KFC cannot find enough chicken. The cause is not so much panic buying, as in earlier waves of COVID-19, but rather shortages of the staff who operate supply chains.
The Australian Industry Group estimates between 10 and 50 per cent of food and logistics staff, depending on the company, are off work isolating either because they have the disease or are close contacts.
The issue of how to alleviate these staff shortages is likely to be high on the agenda again when national cabinet meets on Thursday.
In the past two weeks, national cabinet has already narrowed the definition of a close contact and shortened the compulsory period of isolation from two weeks to as little as one.
These changes are already less than ideal from the point of view of disease control. Some of those released early into the community are still likely to be contagious.
But the risk was moderate and some relaxation was unavoidable, given the shortage of workers.
Yet there now is pressure to go further. NSW has just allowed people who test positive to turn up for essential jobs, such as food manufacturing and transport, without any isolation period – provided they are asymptomatic and take daily rapid antigen tests. Similar rules already apply to many health workers, where the shortage of workers is at crisis point.
Business want even looser rules. The Australian Council of Small Business Organisations, which says 20 to 40 per cent of its workers are furloughed, on Wednesday told the ABC it wanted the isolation rules relaxed for a wider range of workers including the hospitality and retail sectors.
The Herald accepts that some further measures might be needed to keep the economy turning over but allowing bar staff to turn up for work sick with COVID-19 is not one of them.
