A Cornwall holiday park is now just “six pings” away from closing despite having 900 bookings due to the NHS Covid app leading to staff self-isolating.
Patrick Langmaid of Mother Ivey’s Bay Holiday Park, in Padstow, had called on a “Dunkirk Spirit” with guests helping to clean toilets to keep the place open over summer.
But he remains on a knife edge, blaming the NHS Test and Trace app for sending “ping” notifications to “healthy” staff telling them to self-isolate for ten days.
It is part of a nationwide concern where around half a million people in England have been forced to self-isolate in July alone and some claim they are even being pinged through neighbours walls.
Mr Langmaid told Good Morning Britain that there is a “crisis across hospitality”.
He said: “"I'm very much motivated by the need to look after guests' health, safety and wellbeing," he said.
"I have 900 touring bookings that are six pings away from me having to close toilet blocks and cancel holidays.
"We're on a knife edge and it's quite terrifying."
He admits that he felt bad about asking people to help out in an email titled “Dunkirk Spirit” and is ready to pay guests £10 an hour and discounts if they agree.
He continued: “"It's a huge ask.
"I'm absolutely ashamed to be making this request, but these are desperate times.
"The app is absolutely awful and the whole country is being over-pinged, unfortunately. Supply chains are being challenged."
Self isolation has caused severe problems in other sectors as well and schools while it is reported in The Telegraph that the Bluetooth signal used is so strong in the app that it can go through walls. It would means that people may be forced to self isolate even if they haven’t come into contact with someone who has Covid.
It is reported that yesterday there were 530,126 alerts sent in the most recent week - up 46 per cent on the week before.
The impact is that one in five hospitality and retail workers are self-isolating, while NHS hospitals are struggling with up 25 per cent of their staff off.
