Sales at pub, restaurant and bar chains halved in July compared to last summer, as almost two-thirds of restaurants remained closed and consumer wariness sparked a surge in home deliveries.
Sales in July were down 50.4% year-on-year, with restaurants worse hit than pubs and London suffering more than the rest of the UK.
Bar sales fell 63%, restaurants 60% and pubs 45%, according to the Coffer Peach business tracker, which collates figures from 49 group-owned and managed companies that run more than 7,500 sites:
Actors who had objected to Walt Disney Co’s proposed coronavirus safeguards at the Walt Disney World theme park have reached an agreement to return to work, according to a union statement on Wednesday.
Actors’ Equity Association said Disney had committed to providing Covid-19 tests at the Florida theme park for its members, who cannot wear protective masks while performing.
Jordan to close Syria border over virus cases at crossing
Jordan will close its border with Syria for a week starting Thursday, after staff at their only open land crossing tested positive for the novel coronavirus, state media said.
AFP reports that Jordan has seen a drop in virus cases, with new infections recorded mainly among travellers arriving from abroad, but it registered 25 cases of the Covid-19 illness in the past two days, mostly at the Jaber crossing with its war-torn northern neighbour.
Interior Minister Salamah Hammad al-Sahaim decided Wednesday “to close the Jaber border post for a week starting from Thursday morning,” the official Petra news agency reported.
He ordered a “review of all procedures” at the country’s other land borders to prevent them being the source of new outbreaks.
Jordan has registered a total of 1,303 coronavirus infections, including 11 deaths.
Syria has confirmed over 1,000 cases in government-held areas, but the health ministry has admitted it lacks the “capacity… to carry out widespread testing in the provinces”.
Covid-19 may have been circulating in New Zealand for weeks, as fresh case emerges
Covid-19 may have been circulating in the community for weeks, New Zealand’s top health official has said, as a potential ninth new case emerged overnight.
Dr Ashley Bloomfield, the director-general of health, said a new case had been identified at the country’s second-largest school, Mt Albert Grammar, which hosts 3,000 students.
Bloomfield said isolation and testing of any close or casual contacts to positive cases was the primary response to the outbreak, as was tracing the original source.
Genome sequencing was “well underway” on the original four cases, to trace the train of transmission, but he agreed “it was possible” the virus has been circulating in the community for weeks, as some experts are now suggesting.
“We will find the source, I have no doubt about that.” Bloomfield said told Radio NZ.
France sees most new daily virus cases since May
More than 2,500 new coronavirus cases were registered in France in 24 hours in the sharpest increase since May, government data showed on Wednesday, as officials said indicators were “clearly worsening”, AFP reports.
Of 600,000 tests over the past week, more than 11,600 were positive, the health ministry’s DGS public health division said.
At 2.2 percent, the weekly rate of positives was up from 1.6 percent the week before, confirming “increased viral circulation”, it added.
“Indicators used for tracking the epidemic on French territory have clearly worsened in recent days,” the DGS said.
With August traditionally a month when many French people take weeks of summer holiday, “it’s imperative that we keep up our efforts to avoid the epidemic picking up again, individually and collectively, everywhere and at all times”, the DGS said.
Health officials identified 18 new virus clusters in the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 896 nationwide.
But the number of patients in intensive care dropped slightly to 379, a level relatively steady since late July.
Almost 30,400 people have died of coronavirus in France since the epidemic began, the third-heaviest toll in Europe after Britain and Italy.
