British retail sales unexpectedly fell in July, official data showed on Friday, suggesting at least some consumers skipped shopping to follow England's run in the Euro 2020 soccer tournament, or stayed at home due to rising COVID-19 cases.
Retailers reported that the tournament - in which England reached the final - and bad weather kept shoppers away from stores, the Office for National Statistics said.
But analysts said the size of the fall probably reflected the impact of the fast-spreading Delta variant and the requirement for hundreds of thousands of people to isolate after being "pinged" by a government tracing app. The ONS said food store sales were down by 1.5%, reflecting a jump in June and the opening of more hospitality venues. Non-food stores reported a fall of 4.4%, though sales remained 5.8% above their pre-pandemic levels in February 2020.
But there are signs that the bounce-back has slowed after a strong March and April as restrictions began to be lifted. The ONS said the budget deficit in the first four months of the 2021/22 financial year was running 26 billion pounds below an estimate set out by the Office for Budget Responsibility, the government's forecaster, in March.
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