Closed Bar, Palma. | EFE

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More than 10,000 hospitality and trade employees have been laid off because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to data from the Association of Mutual Societies for Work-Related Injuries.

40 percent, or 4,058 are in the Restaurant Sector; 3,299 are in Food Retail and another 3,167 in other areas of the Hospitality Sector.

Almost 45,000 workers in productive sectors have been laid off because of Covid, which excludes casualties in health groups and officials, which are not included in this statistic.

Contagion amongst employees in the restaurant trade is due to the fact that customers don’t wear masks, which increases the risk and is the reason the Government closed them when infections escalated. There’s been a bigger decline in the Hospitality Industry than in food trade despite the fact that bars and restaurants were closed during the State of Emergency, whilst basic trade remained open.

Hotels

In the Hotel Sector and similar accommodation there were 2,041 casualties, which is 4.54% of the total. There were 2,606 casualties in construction and 1,931 in plumbing, electricity and similar services. There were fewer casualties in the Transportation and Domestic Workers Sector.

The Government is expected to relax the restrictions at the Governing Council meeting on Friday and allow terraces of bars and restaurants to reopen, but only until 18:00.

Despite the fact that the Balearic Islands has the second lowest incidence rate the President of the Balearic Government, Francina Armengol is hell bent on a very slow de-escalation process to prevent the British strain from causing an explosion of new cases.

Scientific evidence shows that much of the coronavirus contagion occurs in the hospitality and catering environment, but the Government is having problems identifying the origin of 40.92% of new cases in Mallorca.

According to the Ministry of Health, the traceability of cases in Mallorca is just 12.1%, which means it can only be certain of the source of one in ten infections in Mallorca.