I must admit it was so nice to roll into 2022 and get rid of pesky 2021. I’m sure that I am not the only one from our industry that is glad to see the back of such a loathsome year.
As we move into 2022, I believe our industry will get back on track and hopefully return to some level of normalcy as the year progresses. We will face tough times ahead, as we have before, but I truly believe 2022 will be better than the past two years for our industry.
As we are all aware of, Omicron is a highly transmissible variant of COVID-19, however, early signs seem to suggest that it is less dangerous than previous variants. This, of course, is helped by the many millions in the UK who are now fully vaccinated.
As we can see in early 2022, the issue of self-isolation is becoming a larger problem than the COVID-19 cases themselves. Staff shortages are widespread and the UK government has seen this threat and are keen to limit the time in isolation and try to reduce the impact of employees not being able to attend their places of work.
I think over the next two to three months – providing we keep hospital admission down and the vaccines are preventing serious illness – we will learn to live with COVID-19 and get on with business, and hopefully, get back to where we were in 2019.
This coming year will show whether all the great work we as an industry have done and talked about as a collective venture during the past two years will in practice continue when we go back to working together. Are we still going to help each other?
I really hope we do and it simply leaves it for me to wish you all a very happy, successful and safe New Year!
This article originally appeared in issue #267 of TPi, which you can read here.
