The unprecedented outbreak of the number of infections in the country of 25 million inhabitants impacts all sectors of activity.
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By discovering that the toilet paper radius has been wired, as in the early hours of the pandemic, Michael Mason, a retiree who is shopping in a supermarket of Sydney in the early January, raises his eyes in heaven. “People are idiots,” he blabs before pushing his cart to the bottom of the store. But there, even disappointed. The meat beam is half empty. And this time, it’s not because clients, dreading possible breaks in stocks, have made reservations, but because the large distribution faces supply problems, especially in fresh produce. Since Christmas holidays, the multiplication of sick leave because of the Omicron surfing disrupts most industries in Australia and the phenomenon will grow up.
Labor Shortage.
Sunday, January 9, the Île-Continent, which turned the page of zero Covid in the fall, after failing to eliminate the Delta wave, recorded a new record number of cases with 99 651 positive tests on the the whole territory. In total, the only state of New South Wales, with its 5 million inhabitants, has 234,066 active cases. This is where the new strain took foot, from the first days of December, but no one expected in a few weeks, a massive explosion of contaminations contraining hundreds of thousands of workers, affected directly or indirectly by the coronavirus, to isolate oneself. Several large patterns have drawn the alarm in recent days. The main supermarket chains should compose, in some distribution centers, with 30% to 50% of their payroll minus, a critical level. Just as disturbing, the Transport Workers’ Union announced on Wednesday that between a third and half of its road drivers would currently be off-circuited.
“We are all in the same galley,” says David Flynn, owner of two restaurants on the east Australian coast. “On January 4, I had to close one of my establishments, the Rick Shores, for lack of employees. My second restaurant remains open but I have to constantly change our card because our suppliers too lack of arms. Not to mention customers patients who constantly cancel “, sighs this boss.
“Australia faces one of the world’s most spectacular increases in the world’s number of cases. No sector of activity is spared. Even if the peak comes by the end of January, as some Hope, I do not think it should be expected to expect a significant improvement in the situation before, at least two months, “says Economist Jim Stanford, Director of the Center for Future Work. Like epidemiologists, he criticizes the Government of New South Wales from having delayed to take sanitary measures and to have everything worked on the rate of record vaccination of its population; Nearly 93% of the over 12 years received at least two doses. The new Prime Minister of the State, Dominic Perrott, a practicing Catholic who advocates “individual responsibility”, waited on December 24 to impose if the mandatory port of the mask indoors.
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