Survey finds ‘extremely low’ Covid transmission rates in hospitality venues

A survey by UK Hospitality has found that Covid-19 transmission rates in the on-trade are “extremely low”, with 0.06 customer infections per venue reported.

The survey spanned 12,522 hospitality venues in the UK that employ a total of 358,000 people. It found that in the 14 weeks since the sector was allowed to reopen on 4 July, 1,728 staff members had been infected with Covid, equating to an employee infection rate of 0.48% across 20 million work shifts.

The customer infection rate was found to be even lower – with just 780 customers infected with the virus over the 14-week period, which equates to a 0.06% customer infection rate per venue.

With over 250 million customers visiting hospitality venues in that time period, the infection rate across total customer visits translates to 0.0003%.

The survey also found hospitality businesses had been informed of just 104 cases by Test and Trace since 4 July.

“While there is different data available on infection rates, the data we have collected paints a picture of what we have seen and has been identified to the hospitality sector,” UK Hospitality’s CEO, Kate Nicholls, said.

“This is that there is an extremely low level of transmission in the hospitality sector, confirming the view that measures specifically targeting the hospitality sector are unjustified and should be reconsidered,” she added.