They don't have the staff due to people being off. Many of the other odd-seeming emergency measures taken or planned for in the UK have the same root cause. Eve

They don't have the staff due to people being off. Many of the other odd-seeming emergency measures taken or planned for in the UK have the same root cause. Even the school closures are more about staffing than reducing the spread of the virus; apparently that's a useful measure in flu pandemics because kids lack the immunity that adults do, but since no-one is immune to this as far as we know it's kind of weak here.