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Dear EBU Club and County Officials The government has confirmed that the rules and regulations currently in place in response to the COVID pandemic will be relaxed from next week in England. There will no longer be a limit on the number of people who can meet in a group and the “1m-plus rule” will be removed. Face coverings will no longer be required except that the government "expects and recommends" that people wear face coverings in crowded areas. Only night-clubs and large events are being advised to ask for evidence of vaccination or negative COVID tests using “vaccine passports”. Many bridge clubs will be keen to re-start face-to-face bridge, either alongside online bridge or in place of it entirely. The decisions about how and when to do this, and which extra mitigations to adopt, need to be made by each individual club itself, taking account of its premises, its members, their preferences and their demographic composition. It does seem that clubs will no longer be required to employ any of the more extreme measures that have been discussed, like having separate cards for each table, to comply with the regulations. It does, though, remain sensible for clubs to spread out tables as much as possible to avoid crowding, to ensure adequate ventilation and to encourage the frequent use of hand sanitizer. Clubs have also been enquiring about the position of legal liability with regard to Covid and our insurers’ most recent information about this says of clubs that “for a liability claim to be upheld, it would have to be proven that they had been negligent”. Therefore you should ensure you take all reasonable steps to comply with the new regulations. Best wishes, Gordon Rainsford |
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