COSTA Coffee has joined the list of businesses closing because of the coronavirus.

Costa announced that it would be temporarily closing its stores from tonight (Monday, March 23).

In a statement on Twitter the coffee chain said: “As the need to support social distancing increases, we have taken the decision to temporarily close our stores from this evening.

“We will do our best to keep Costa stores open in hospitals where we will continue to provide free takeaway coffees for the next two weeks to the NHS workers who are at the forefront of this crisis.

“Wherever possible, we will also keep our Costa Express machines available to serve you a great cup of coffee.”

 The Costa Coffee stores in the Old Market and High Town are serving takeaway only coffees today (Monday).

Meanwhile Subway have also decided to temporarily close their stores from 5pm tonight.

Colin Hughes, Country Director UK & Ireland said: “At Subway, we’ve been doing all we can to support the efforts to combat the COVID-19 outbreak, and I’d like to thank our loyal guests and all employees who have supported the brand through this unprecedented situation.

“We took this decision as we want to continue doing everything in our power to keep people safe.

“We believe closing the stores is the right thing to do. By supporting social distancing, we can help protect not just our loyal guests, dedicated Franchise Owners and Sandwich Artists™, but the wider communities they serve.

“Locally, over today and tomorrow, Franchise Owners will be using up their fresh ingredients to donate Subs to local community groups and emergency workers, wherever possible.”