‘Good news’ as new case numbers fall

Guernsey now has 306 active cases, 30 of which were identified in the 24 hours up to midnight on Monday.

This is the lowest number of new cases in the last five days.

Policy & Resources vice-president Heidi Soulsby welcomed the news on Twitter.

‘This is good news,’ she said.

‘We can do this.’

However, she warned the numbers were likely to rise and fall over the coming week, due to Guernsey’s small numbers.

‘One day shouldn’t be seen as where things are going,’ she said.

‘It is the trend that is important.’

It has been 12 days since Guernsey went into a hard lockdown, following the identification of four community seeded Covid cases. Since then the number of new cases has been climbing, with 44 last Friday, 47 on Saturday and 46 on Sunday.

As well as a drop in new cases, this week it was revealed that increasing numbers of cases were being found through contacts, rather than from unknown community sources.

Deputy Soulsby said that of the latest figure of 30 cases, seven were from unknown community seeding.

There are five people in hospital, but the latest figures did show there had been one recovery.

Meanwhile, islanders were yesterday urged not to send treats to their friends and relatives in care homes to help minimise the risk of spreading the virus.

There have been reassurances that life in care homes is continuing largely as normal.

Head of Law Enforcement Chief Officer Ruari Hardy confirmed a number of staff were having to self-isolate, but that did not mean any islanders were at risk.

He added that they knew the lockdown exacerbated problems with domestic abuse.

‘We are ensuring that our response to problems such as this is not affected, and will continue to react firmly to any reports,’ he said.

The States systems were hit by technical problems yesterday which took down helplines, including the one dealing with vaccine enquiries.

It also delayed the start of the States meeting in the morning by an hour.

Later in the day urgent questions were asked about the risk of education inequality during lockdown because of the different online learning being offered by the schools in the private and public sectors.