BOSSES at Cumbria Chamber of Commerce have issued advice to the public after Health Secretary Matt Hancock tells Brits they should stop 'soldiering on' and going in to work sick.

The advice comes after the Health Secretary was speaking at a joint session of the Health and Social Care Committee and Science and Technology Committee last week,where he hailed the testing capacity built up by the NHS.

Mr Hancock said: "Why in Britain do we think it's acceptable to soldier on and go into work if you have flu symptoms or a runny nose, thus making your colleagues ill? "I think that's something that is going to have to change. "If you have in future flu-like symptoms, you should get a test for it and find out what's wrong with you, and if you need to stay at home to protect others, then you should stay at home.

"We are peculiarly unusual and outliers in soldiering on and still going to work, and it kind of being the culture that 'as long as you can get out of bed you still should get into work'. That should change.

"This year there's been far fewer respiratory and other communicable diseases turning up in the NHS.

"I want this massive diagnostics capacity to be core to how we treat people in the NHS so that we help people to stay healthy in the first place, rather than just looking after them when they're ill."

Rob Johnston, Chief Executive of Cumbria Chamber of Commerce, believes that Covid has changed attitudes.

He said: “It is the case in many businesses that people who are feeling a bit under the weather will come to work because they don’t want to let down their colleagues, especially in smaller firms where you often get tightly-knit teams. “Covid has changed that though.

"I would hope that no-one displaying Covid symptoms would go to work and risk spreading the virus.

“Since the start of the pandemic, we’ve been urging businesses to follow Covid restrictions to the letter because that’s the way to bring down the infection rate, boost consumer confidence and avoid further damaging lockdowns.”