Proactive surge testing to be used to hunt asymptomatic cases

PROACTIVE surge testing will be used to detect asymptomatic islanders now that known positive cases are beginning to plateau.

For the third time this week, Civil Contingencies Authority political members and senior States officers gave islanders a virtual briefing on the Covid-19 situation. Clockwise, from top left, Deputy Peter Ferbrache, Deputy Al Brouard, Deputy Heidi Soulsby, Director of Public Health Dr Nicola Brink and States chief executive Paul Whitfield.

The initial focus will be places which are associated with positive Covid-19 diagnoses.

Unknown community sourced cases are falling, from 25 in the first week of February to seven this week. ‘Our testing strategy really has three arms,’ said Dr Nicola Brink, Director of Public Health.

‘It has the testing of symptomatic people, the surveillance testing where you’re just going through groups of individuals looking for positives, and surge testing where you identify an area of interest and then you put some testing around that to see if there are any other cases you can identify.’

Dr Brink said surge testing will be done more in the coming days in areas with known Covid activity. ‘That’s important because it enables us to detect asymptomatic infections and stamp out any residual clusters of infection.’

If a case is identified to a specific area then all those in the group associated with that area will be tested, before broader testing around that group is carried out.

This was the case with schools and supermarkets where positive cases were identified, Dr Brink said, to build a full picture of Covid activity around that area.

‘So, what you’re doing with surge testing is you’re taking a case and you’re then trying to work outwards from that, and see if there are any other cases that you can identify.

‘We’re particularly looking for the asymptomatic cases, because you want to stop those chains of transmission so you’re continually looking to stop those chains.’

Currently testing is approached reactively but, as the curve flattens, proactive testing will take over to identify any community sources.

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