London | Fears are growing in the UK that staff absences have become as big a problem as COVID-19 itself, with bin collections delayed, trains cancelled and 17 hospitals in Greater Manchester announcing this week that they would be suspending some non-urgent surgery with 15 per cent of staff off sick.
To ease the crisis, millions of people who test positive on lateral flow devices were on Wednesday expected to be told they did not need to take follow-up PCR tests, which delay the official start of isolation for hundreds of thousands of people.
