Chance of new cases as island starts to mix ‘but we’re ready for those’
THE ISLAND’S GPs are being tested this week for coronavirus as Public Health steps up its mission to hunt out possible asymptomatic cases of the disease.
About 100 frontline workers at the hospital and the ambulance service have already been tested, and so far all the results have been negative.
The extended testing strategy has, up until now, confirmed the island’s official status as Covid-19 free, although health officials stressed that the disease has not gone away.
After the GPs in the three primary care practices, the next groups to be targeted are the care homes and parts of Alderney’s community.
Random household testing is a future possibility, but will be carried out only if it is ‘clinically indicated’.
Antibody tests have now arrived in the island and this week they are being properly verified.
A new piece of kit which will allow around 400 tests to be carried out per day on-island is on schedule to arrive in the middle of June.
Director of Public Health, Dr Nicola Brink, said all their evidence suggested the disease had been suppressed locally.
‘Every parameter that we look at we can’t see any evidence of Covid-19 activity.
‘We’ve had no new cases for 27 days, we’ve got so few symptomatic people now that we’ve started testing asymptomatic people and we’ve seen no cases in asymptomatic frontline workers.
‘All of our intelligence tells us that we’ve got very little, if any, Covid-19 activity in the community, but there’s always a chance for a case to bubble up and lead to secondary transmission. As the island starts to mix together, with the greater connectivity we’re more likely to see a case or two coming to the forefront, and we’re ready for those.’
The gradual loosening of Guernsey’s lockdown measures will take a big step on Saturday when more businesses are allowed to reopen.
Dr Brink is keen for normal life to resume in the abnormal circumstances, but with extra vigilance with measures such as thorough and repeated hand washing. As the island adjusts to the new world, Dr Brink said businesses which follow the guidelines can reopen with confidence.
‘We called it a framework because we wanted it to be flexible, so if we exceeded are expectations, which we have done, we have the ability to go faster, and we’re exiting into phase four far sooner than we thought we would, and indeed we will move to phase five if we think it’s safe to do that, but we’ll now be looking hard over the next four weeks at what happens in phase four.’
