Quarantine after quarantine the retail is suffering losses. The only hope is to implement the vaccination as fast as possible, PM assumes. But the plan may be unrealistic because of the vaccine shortages and emergence of new SARS v2 varieties that may be resistant to current set of the vaccines.

The stricter quarantine measures, including shop closures to contain the spread of the virus, are hitting British retailers hard. Sales in the generally important month of January, when many British go on bargain hunting, fell by over eight percent. This meant that the malaise in the shopping street, but also online, was much greater than what experts expected.

Economists generally assumed that the lock-down measures would result in a three percent drop in sales. According to the British Retail Consortium, the three lockdowns in the country have already cost £ 22 billion in sales losses.

Business lobby group New West End Company fears that at least one fifth of the stores in London’s well-known shopping area Oxford Street will remain closed if lockdown measures are relaxed.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson hopes that a rapid implementation of the vaccination programme will allow shops, restaurants and bars to open again by the summer. This should also boost employment and hopefully attract shoppers back to the shopping streets, that is the idea. But experts expect that some of the revenue that is now generated online will remain lost to the shopping street.