‘Pubs and restaurants caused less than 3 per cent of infections in the week before curfew’

• FURTHER to the letter from the chair of The Soho Society, Tim Lord, (We need a thoughtful plan to save Soho’s unique character, September 25)…

• Saving the hospitality industry and at the same time accusing them of being responsible for the uncontrollable spread of Covid-19 by their actions is unreasonable.

Statistics show that pubs and restaurants caused less than 3 per cent of infections in the week before curfew.

• Closing pubs, bars, restaurants, and live music venues at 10pm and allowing off-licences to remain open is not the way to control the virus.

People go to queue at the off-licences to buy alcohol and drink on the streets, causing aggro for the police and city inspectors, despite the clear signs “seated drinking & eating only” displayed all over Soho.

This doesn’t make sense and there is no balance between protecting the economy and controlling the spread of the virus. Turning Soho into a ghost town is certainly not the way ahead.

• Sadly the atmosphere is gone, and hospitality staff will be all out of work. Musicians are also badly hit by this epidemic and most of them haven’t worked since the beginning of lockdown in March.

Just when we thought we were getting back to some sort of normality we are now hit by this 10pm curfew, as if it will make any difference between 10pm or 2am.

You will end up with people drinking in the streets, which is more likely to spread the virus than drinking in the bars where there is a safe environment.

• Furthermore, with the curfew we are losing 75 per cent of our income, and will never be able to pay our rent to the billionaire landlords.

We need the government to intervene with the private landlords and demand a rent holiday or alternative support to enable us to be able to support our staff.

• Also it is interesting to discover that parliament’s bars were not to have been subject to the 10pm curfew or having to collect customers’ details, despite the imposition of tougher rules on pubs and bars last Thursday.

Surely these new rules should have applied to all bars, no exception.

SAM SHAKER
Jazz after Dark
Greek Street, W1