Many of the UK’s busiest high streets were unseasonably quiet on Christmas Eve as surging Covid cases drove many to rethink their shopping plans.
Footfall in central London dropped nearly a third (30.3%) from last Friday, according to retail analysts Springboard.
Oxford Street and Regent Street, usually teeming with last-minute gift shoppers, were relatively quiet throughout the day.
Meanwhile, photos show virtually empty streets in Oxford’s historic city centre and around Bristol’s Broadmead Shoping Centre.
While some cities such as Newcastle still appeared busy, analysts found an average 10% drop in footfall across city centres outside the capital over the past week.
Initial data shows this year’s Christmas Eve is 30% better for retailers than last year’s, however high street shopping is still down by over 20% on pre-pandemic levels.
Retail parks have fared better than high streets, helping push overall footfall across the country up by nearly 14% compared with a week ago, Springboard added.
This was reflected in commercial centres such as North Tyneside’s Silverlink Retail Park, which saw snaking queues of shoppers waiting to get in.
Many businesses have reinstated limits on how the number of customers inside their premises despite the government holding back from further restrictions to tackle the Omicron variant.
A further 112,186 confirmed Covid cases were announced on Friday, of which the vast majority are believed to have been caused by the new strain.
More than 100,000 new cases have been confirmed per day for the last seven days, according to the latest data from the UK Health Security Agency.
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