‘We are aware of the impact to front-line business and services’
DIRECTOR of Public Health Dr Nicola Brink has acknowledged that new stringent isolation measures to curb the spread of Covid-19 could have a detrimental impact on front-line businesses such as shops and supply chains.
New self-isolation guidelines issued yesterday advised anyone with any respiratory symptom, including sore throat, runny or blocked nose, a cough or myalgia [pain in a muscle or group of muscles] to self-isolate until they have been clear of symptoms for 48 hours.
Dr Brink said the measures could flatten the curve, a reference to the steep graphs that visualise the number of cases rapidly increasing when left unchecked, and hoped the measures could decrease cases by 60% and ease pressure on the health service.
However, she acknowledged that the new measures could have a considerable impact on front-line businesses such as shops and supply lines but said that a more conservative approach was justified.
‘We know that we’re coming to the end of the respiratory season going into March so that’s an advantage.
‘I think with regard to front-line workers we are very aware of the impact and no more so than in areas like health and social care.
‘But we feel that this is important enough that we actually need to look to stop any community spread of Covid-19 and I’d rather sit in front of you all in two months’ time and have you say ‘‘you over-reacted’’ than say to me, ‘‘why didn’t you do more?’’.’
Deputy Heidi Soulsby, president of the Health & Social Care committee, said preparing for Covid-19 had meant other projects had to be put on the back-burner.
‘As you can probably imagine, the public health service is flat out and totally 100% focused on what we’re going through at the moment so as a committee we’ve decided that those work streams that we were looking at in public health in terms of substance misuse strategy and gambling we’ve put on hold because we believe this is far more important at this time and needs to have the focus of everybody.’
Deputy St Pier assured businesses that they would not need to worry about fulfilling economic substance requirements to hold board meetings in person in the island if isolation and travel recommendations made it dangerous to do so.
He advised businesses to document thoroughly the policies and reasoning that led to board meetings not being held in Guernsey.
