Second Covid-19 death and another cluster found

At today's press conference, director of Public Health Dr Nicola Brink said she was saddened to have been given the news that the island has had its second Covid-19-related death.

'Our condolences go out to the family at a time that will be very sad for them,' she said.

There has been an increase in the number of positive cases in the last 24 hours.

A second cluster has also been found in another care home and appropriate interventions and precautions have been put in place to deal with this outbreak. 11 residents have tested positive, along with two of the staff members.

'We now have a total of 114 positive cases and 718 negative cases with 78 people awaiting test results.

'At the face of it that seems like a significant increase in the number of cases but what I'd like to make clear at this time is the difference between what we are doing and what other jurisdictions are doing.

'We are pro-actively looking for cases [by] going out into the community and having a very low threshold to screening people with respiratory symptoms of any degree.

'If I was reporting to you in a similar way to what England is reporting, I would be saying to you we have five cases because that's how many we have [with it] in our hospital.'

She explained that going out and pro-actively looking for cases was deemed the right thing to do for our jurisdiction.

'We have a higher testing rate per capita, per 100,000 than our neighbouring jurisdictions.'

The age range of people with Covid-19 in the Bailiwick is now from less than one year old to well over 80 years old.

The average age for patients is 56, with a slightly higher male average of 57 and females of 54.