Active Covid cases drop below 300 for first time since start of month

That was the message from the president of Health & Social Care Deputy Al Brouard at today's Covid-19 press conference.

Civil Contingencies Authority chair Deputy Peter Ferbrache announced that Sark, which has never has a positive case of Covid-19 on the island, will be able to enter Stage 1 on Monday 15 February.

This means their economy will start to open up more, and the school will re-open.

For Guernsey, the island will not move to Stage 1 of the lockdown exit strategy until 18 February at the earliest. And that decision will be made next week.

Deputy Ferbrache reminded islanders that face masks in indoor public places will be mandatory from tomorrow.

'From Monday we will also be accepting applications from businesses for small business grants,' he said.

'These are for companies with less than 20 people or self-employed people whose business is their main source of income.'

Director of Public Health Dr Nicola Brink gave an update on the Bailiwick's cases.

472 cases have been identified since 22 January, 287 of which are still active.

'Just under 42% of cases that we've seen since 22 January have now recovered, which is great news,' she said.

Early on, cases from unknown community sources were of particular concern.

However, within contact groups, large numbers in families are testing positive.

She said this was positive from a 'containment' point of view.

On 9, 10 and 11 February, a care home staff member tested positive.

'Of the nine contacts found yesterday, five were from one family,' Dr Brink said.

'This shows how we are closing the net around the cases in the island.'

Public Health are still looking at any possible links of one person who developed symptoms and tested positive yesterday.

Now three care homes are affected.

In the first care home, three staff have tested positive and two residents are positive.

Recently, another care home has become involved, with one member of staff testing positive there. They were identified through contact tracing.

None of the residents in that care home have tested positive.

'We're not seeing the impact on the care homes that we did in the first wave,' she said, as she confirmed that most residents had received their dose of the vaccine.

Modelling what might have happened to case numbers has taken place, outlining various scenarios.

'We're moving from a reactive situation to a proactive case-finding exercise,' Dr Brink said.

'We're also doing surge testing around areas where we've seen previous positive cases. This would identify asymptomatic cases which is good because those cases can still transmit in the community.'

Lockdown has seen a flattening of the curve of how fast case numbers were doubling.

'As you lockdown, you get fewer contacts between people so cases have a lower chance of causing ongoing infection in our community.'

Health & Social Care president Deputy Al Brouard reported that more than 16,000 doses of the vaccine have been administered across the Bailiwick.

13,000 islanders have had their first dose and of that number, 3,000 have had their second.

He said this was an excellent achievement and was a credit to the vaccination team.

'By the end of March, fingers crossed, we will have vaccinated 27,000 doses.

'We are still working behind the scenes to provide more detailed stats, but the team is small and the work demand is large at the moment.'

He stressed that wastage levels were exceptionally low.

Talking about changing the vaccination programme, he referred to new evidence about how to administer the vaccine with maximum efficacy.

'Significantly, there's now clear evidence that by leaving a longer gap between doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the second dose is more effective at providing more protection to individuals.'

HSC has agreed that the second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine should be scheduled for 10 weeks after the first dose, rather than the initial six weeks that was agreed.

'This means some appointments will need to be rescheduled.'

More detail to follow