Good Morning Britain will be out of commission for a few days. There will be no episodes between Dec. 29 and Dec. 31. The show will not return until Jan. 4, the day after a U.K. Bank Holiday. The decision to cancel next week’s episodes is due to “the pandemic and to protect our teams, so we have decided to give them an extended break,” a spokesman told Deadline. The news comes as the U.K. continues to experience a spike in new COVID-19 cases as the omicron variant spreads through the country (and the world). It also comes after anchor Sean Fletcher revealed that he tested positive on Dec. 19 and was forced to miss BBC One’s Sunday Morning Live, which he also hosts.
“Had quite a morning. A positive Lateral Flow Test backed up by a positive PCR test. Went downstairs for breakfast and cut my finger with a bread knife. Couldn’t stop it bleeding,” Fletcher wrote on Instagram, alongside a photo of the positive test. He “patched” himself up so he could still appear on Sunday Morning Live virtually. He went on to thank Adrian Chiles, who hosted from the studio in his place, reports the Mirror.
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Since Fletcher also appears on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, producers there took measures to protect other presenters there by limiting the number of shows for the rest of the year. The decision to cancel episodes is shocking since Good Morning Britain continued airing last year, even during the lockdown. One TV source told The Sun this was “unheard of.”
“It just shows how alarmed everyone is within the network and on the show itself,” the Sun‘s source said. “We even aired throughout the height of the pandemic, but lately it is becoming near impossible with staffing shortages and fears about the Christmas period being derailed for everyone. Hopefully, things will get back to normal early in the New Year – it’s a big blow for the network, and for advertising too.”
