WATCH: Covid-19 outbreak discovered in care home

Civil Contingencies Authority chairman Deputy Peter Ferbrache said to friends and colleagues in Alderney, where the first case since the pandemic was picked up last night, that the island has the full support of the rest of the Bailiwick.

He also said there has been an outbreak in one of the care homes, but the issue was being controlled.

'Tomorrow we will have been in lockdown for two weeks and the CCA promised to look at the situation and assess where we were.

'Because of the situation we are not making any changes for the next few days,' he said.

'We are hoping that the worst is behind us, and we are going to review where we are in the early part of next week and by next Wednesday we will make an announcement as to whether any changes will be made.'

Although he could not give any specific timeframes, he said the exit from this lockdown was expected to be quicker than the lockdown in 2020.

Director of Public Health Dr Nicola Brink summarised the cases since 25 January, saying it was important to look at trends on a daily basis.

'Yesterday we had 17 positive cases and 820 negative cases. These results are encouraging however we have a very serious situation in that we have a care home outbreak,' she said.

Dividing the total cases into three sections, she explained how the total number of cases since 22 January was 379, with 18 recoveries.

Between 6 September and 21 January, the majority of cases were travel-related. There was also the small cluster that was seen in October.

'What we're always concerned about is unknown community sources of infection,' she said.

'You can see the gradual shift of more cases being found through contact tracing rather than an unknown community source that we can't link to a previous source.'

Of the 17 cases found yesterday, none were an unknown community source.

Speaking about the case in Alderney, she said the patient was tested as part of the contact tracing policies.

'I want to reassure people in Alderney that this person has done everything correctly with regard to lockdown rules and self-isolation.

'While the risk is not absent, it is very low.'

She described it as a pro-active detection of the case but reminded everyone to be vigilant and come forward for testing if they have any symptoms.

Looking at cases throughout time, she said the gradual flattening of the curve was absolutely what the Bailiwick wanted to see.

The trend of the amount of people being tested because they have symptoms is declining, as the number of contact tracing tests increases.

'Here we can see a higher number of people in the over-70 and over-80 age groups testing positive,' she said.

'So while we are seeing some positive trends, there are still areas of serious concern.'

Medical director Dr Peter Rabey spoke about the care home outbreak found earlier today in La Grande Lande Residential Home, St Saviour's.

The name of the care home was confirmed so that family and friends of residents in other care homes would not be anxious or worried.

'Two residents and two members of staff have tested positive in the last 24 hours.'

Nobody involved is unwell needing hospital attention because of symptoms.

The entire residential body has been identified as close contacts and have been put into self-isolation.

'We've been looking to see if we can staff the care home in any other way and the answer is that we simply cannot provide proper staffing for the next week or two weeks as the case may be,' he said.

'Therefore we have taken the decision to transfer the entire resident population [11 patients] into wards at the PEH site.'

The two residents who tested positive will be going into the Covid ward and had their first vaccination about three weeks ago, which Dr Rabey hoped would provide a good deal of protection.

The other nine residents have testing negative but are being looked after and will be tested daily.

There are five other patients in the Covid ward at the hospital, and one in intensive care.

He reminded people that even if they had been vaccinated they should not be complacent.