Larne pub closes temporarily for 'deep clean' and staff testing

Billy Andy's wrote on Sunday that it had taken the decision after a further two staff members tested positive for COVID-19.

One employee had already tested positive at the beginning of the month.

A post on the Browndod Road venue's Facebook page said: "This came to light yesterday and we immediately contacted the Department of Environmental Health to assist us on how to proceed.

"The Department have advised that is it is not necessary to close, and are more than satisfied that we have adhered to all the current government guidelines in place since reopening.

"This has included daily deep cleans, strict social distancing and many other measures.

"However, as a restaurant we understand the importance of consumer confidence and therefore we are taking the opportunity to close the restaurant for today and propose to reopen on Friday 11th. This will be facilitate deep clean measures and enable every member of staff to be tested or retested."

Outlining the difficulty of reaching authorities at the weekend for assistance, owners added that the venue remained open on Saturday night with a "shoestring of staff, cancelling any member who hadn’t returned a ‘negative’ result".

The post added: "Now at three confirmed cases and possibly four we await to hear this morning on one.

"This may appear like a small cluster; however, we have been tracing it back with our movements and in conjunction with environmental health are confident that these cases are have been caught from external sources.

"Billy Andy's continues to fully comply with all government guidelines and we have taken this extra measure today because our staff and customer well-being is our number one priority."