WATCH: Covid cases with unknown sources still being found, but numbers dropping

At the start of today's Covid-19 press conference, chair of the Civil Contingencies Authority Deputy Peter Ferbrache announced that Guernsey would move to Stage 1 of the exit from lockdown on Monday, as long as there are no unforeseen developments or an extraordinary rise in cases.

Alderney, which has only seen one case of Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic, will move to Stage 1 tomorrow.

Details of the three-staged lockdown exit can be seen here.

Deputy Ferbrache said the decision was made after due consideration and encouraged people who disagreed with the decision to contact him as head of the Authority, not the Public Health team.

'Stage 1 is the first real step into the exit from lockdown back to normality, but there's only so long we can ask people to wait,' he said, emphasising that this was a balanced decision based on risk.

'This is a very cautious step forward, we're putting our toe into the water.'

When it came to the Bailiwick's current situation, director of Public Health Dr Nicola Brink said since 22 January, a total of 496 positive cases have been seen.

While the large majority have recovered, one has sadly died and 123 remain active.

'This is a good position to be in, but we're not there yet,' she said.

Planned workforce surveillance cases have been added to the case breakdown.

The care home sector is looked at specifically, as that is a vulnerable sector.

On Monday, two cases were detected through planned workforce screening.

These were asymptomatic and Dr Brink said these were cases the Bailiwick really had to focus on.

'Yesterday we had one unknown community case, this person was symptomatic.'

While the number of cases identified is decreasing, cases where the source is not known are still a concern.

Critical to the exit from this lockdown is the enhanced community surveillance testing progreamme.

This will look to detect asymptomatic infections and manage any small clusters associated with them.

Talking about surge testing, she said: 'If we detect one or two cases in a particular area, we can then go and put some testing around that area to prevent that onward chain of transmission and that's how we'll bring the whole matter under control.'

Public Health is not looking for zero cases on the island before coming partially out of lockdown.

'What we're looking for is if we're happy that we can control cases through our track and trace system and expanded testing.

'We're not looking for a defined number of cases to move to Stages 1 or 2.'

Considering the move to Stage 3, which is opening the whole Bailiwick, Dr Brink said a hard look at the situation when that time comes, as well as looking at what proportion of the Bailiwick are immunised.