NEWS SPECIAL
COVID-19 UPDATE FOR ALL THE LATEST CORONAVIRUS NEWS, HEAD TO WWW.SLRMAG.CO.UK/CATEGORY/NEWS/
LIDL SHOPPERS TACKLE HUNGER
SAINSBURY’S MATCHES ALDI
OVER 40,000 ESSENTIAL FOOD ITEMS WERE DONATED THEIR
Sainsbury’s has started
LOCAL COMMUNITIES BY LIDL SHOPPERS IN THE FIVE WEEKS
price-matching 250 food
APPROACHING CHRISTMAS.
items against Aldi in a range of categories including fresh meat, vegetables and dairy.
BOOHOO CONCERNS Retail trade union Usdaw is seeking urgent meetings with Arcadia administrators and urges them to treat staff with fairness and dignity, after Boohoo confirmed the takeover of Arcadia brands Burton, Wallis and Dorothy Perkins on Monday. The deal will see all brands taken online only.
OCADO FLYING Ocado’s revenues jumped almost 33% to £2.3bn in the year to 29 November 2020, driven by the shift to online grocery shopping. Average basket spend jumped from £106 to £137. The improvements helped the retailer reduce its pre-tax loss to £44m, significantly down from a loss of £214.5m the year before.
Lidl customers donated over 40,000 essential food items to their local communities at the till through the ‘Teaming up to Tackle Hunger’ scheme in the five weeks running up to Christmas – and Lidl matched every donation. The ‘Teaming up to Tackle Hunger’ initiative saw generous shoppers make donations of products like rice, tuna and cereal for grassroots non-profit organisations the length and breadth of Scotland. By simply scanning a flyer representing a staple product at the till, shoppers added funds to purchase one of five store cupboard essentials, with each donation matched by Lidl. This month, Lidl processed the collaborative donations from its 105 Scottish stores with pallets of vital food ready to be distributed to 105 partnering charities across the country.
RETAILERS URGED TO PLAN FOR ‘LONG COVID’ Doctors are urging retailers to plan for the effects of ‘Long Covid’ now as cases continue to grow in order to minimise the risk of major staffing problems. “The medical profession knows about post viral syndromes, but the potential scale and complexity of Long Covid is presenting new challenges,” says Dr Greg Irons, an occupational health specialist practising in London. “The UK Government’s Office for National Statistics published data last November showing that around one in five people who tested positive for Covid-19 had symptoms that lasted
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for five weeks or longer – and one in 10 people had symptoms that lasted for 12 weeks or longer.” A study recently published in The Lancet followed 1,733 adults in Wuhan who were recovering from Covid. It found 76% of patients reported at least one post-viral symptom. More than 50% showed chest problems on scans. Considering that approaching four million people in the UK have tested positive so far, employers are potentially looking at a significant number of Long Covid cases within the UK workforce.
