A POPULAR Ayrshire hotel has closed its flagship restaurant after two members of staff tested positive for covid.
The owners of the Seamill Hydro to close the Orangery restaurant and will only be serving drinks at their second restaurant, Aura. Residents in the hotel will be able to access room service.
Read more: Glasgow's tall ship Glenlee in battle to secure future as she marks 125th year
George Jarvie-Jones, Associate Director, said: "As soon as we were made aware of the possibility of members of our team being infected, we reported this to the Health Protection Team at NHS Ayrshire and Arran and followed all guidance provided. Two cases of coronavirus in our workforce have now been confirmed by PCR tests. We have proactively been supporting the authorities with confirming all close contacts of those employees with confirmed cases.
"Throughout the pandemic the safety of our team and guests has been of paramount importance with us often going further than just complying with regulations. The measures we have implemented are regularly commented on by our guests as the most robust of any venue they have visited with customers telling us again and again that feel safe when enjoying time at the hotel."
A local environmental health team had previously to visit the hotel and review the measures in place to minimise the risk of transmission, both environmental health and health protection teams considered the safeguards in place robust enough for it to be safe to continue to operate as normal.
Read more: Glasgow will focus on major challenges for city as recovery strategy is developed
Mr Jarvie-Jones added: "However, to further reduce any potential risk of transmission we took steps to reduce demand allowing us to operate with smaller teams. We have now also requested that all employees take rapid lateral flow tests before returning to work and twice per week until further notice. We are seeing high uptake of testing in our workforce and are pleased to confirm that this has not identified any further potential cases.
"While testing is ongoing and a number of employees remain in self-isolation, we have taken the difficult decision to continue to limit the service we are offering within the hotel, with our Orangery restaurant closed and the Aura Lounge Bar offering drinks service only to hotel residents. We are also offering room service to our guests throughout this period. Our leisure facilities, salon and gift shop remain open as normal."
All scheduled weddings at the hotel will be able to go ahead.
Mr Jarvie-Jones added: "We would also like to thank our guests for their kind words, support and understanding, we look forward to extending our services again very soon, for further updates please check our Facebook page.
"I would also like to again express my thanks the amazing people we are lucky enough to call our team here at Seamill Hydro. Throughout this pandemic they have shown remarkable resilience, despite personal hardships, working hard to provide exceptional experiences to our guests. We wish our two team members currently infected a speedy and complete recovery and look forward to welcoming them and those currently self-isolating back to work very soon."
Lynne McNiven, Director of Public Health at NHS Ayrshire & Arran said their Test & Protect team can confirm that a contact tracing exercise has been carried out with links to a hotel in the North Ayrshire Council area, following confirmed cases of covid infection.
Ms McNiven added: "We have undertaken a careful risk assessment to identify any individuals who may have had contact with the confirmed case. These individuals and their households have been contacted and told to self-isolate for 10 days and book a test.
All relevant Public Health measures are in place and our Public Health Team is working with North Ayrshire Environmental Health Officers to manage and monitor the situation.
To respect and maintain patient confidentiality it is not possible to release any further information at this time."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel