CCA chairman expresses his surprise at lack of global Covid-19 response
A LACK of a global response to a global pandemic has surprised Guernsey’s political leader, he told a Times Radio presenter yesterday.
The island’s most senior politician and chairman of the Civil Contingencies Authority, Gavin St Pier appeared on Matt Chorley’s Times Radio show at lunchtime yesterday.
It marked 102 days with no known cases of Covid-19 in the island, despite lockdown restrictions being eased 51 days ago.
Mr Chorley asked what lessons the UK mainland of 60 million people could learn from what Guernsey had done in the face of the pandemic.
Although Deputy St Pier was reluctant to start telling other people what they should do, noting that every jurisdiction was different. ‘The one surprise for me is, given the global nature of this, how lacking the global response has been and how it has been down to each jurisdiction to work out what is the right response.
‘It’s surprising when you think about the global response to the financial crisis 10 or so years ago, but nonetheless that is the case.’
With the benefit of hindsight now, Deputy St Pier said the decision 144 days ago to impose severe travel restrictions was the thing that turned the corner for Guernsey in terms of being able to control transmission within the community.
‘And, of course, we never lost the contact and trace model while we expanded our testing capacity,’ he said.
Translating to UK figures, at the end of March Guernsey had the capacity per capita to test the UK equivalent of 400,000 people a day.
That capacity to deal with those in hospital and other asymptomatic people in the community meant Guernsey’s ability to identify all those at risk was probably the key thing that enabled the island to get a grip of the virus.
Listing three critical things in controlling the virus, Deputy St Pier said ‘test, test, test’, ‘track and test’ and ‘border control’ will likely be looked back on as the things that Guernsey did well when authorities analyse the island’s response to the pandemic.
He told Mr Chorley and listeners that in Guernsey there is no social distancing, no restrictions on events or public gatherings and that Guernsey was in a gilded place right now.
However, he recognised that the challenge now was to re-connect with the outside world, and the obvious necessity to do that.
‘For most of those 144 days with restrictions, the only people who could come in were essential movements, and of course there will always be some reasons for people to move.’
He spoke about the recent decision to allow more non-essential travel, but that was still currently accompanied by a self-isolation period on entry. ‘We are reducing that to seven days from 17 August with a test at the end of seven days, and that’s based on recent evidence from a number of institutions that it will still enable us to have very effective control while minimising the risk of re-infection.
‘That is supported by quite a severe penalty for anyone who breaks quarantine and we have had a number of convictions and quite heavy fines to enforce it.’
He said the community was entirely behind this and recognised the advantage to the wider community, particularly to those who would otherwise be sheltering.
