Light can be brought ever closer

It was a vision of nightmares.

50,000 island cases of coronavirus and so many bodies that we would have run out of places to put them. Up to 1,800 excess deaths.

It was the worst-case scenario and, if islanders maintain discipline, one that we can already look back on with a shudder, confident it will never happen.

The worst-case scenario for the end of lockdown and some return to normality is still in play. Rush back too soon and much of the good work could be undone, forcing the island into a cycle of lockdown, release, spike in cases, lockdown.

And repeat.

Yesterday, we were given the alternative: a light at the end of the tunnel based on a gradual, phased end to restrictions.

At present, the light is painfully distant. From a start point of 25 April the island inches along in four- and eight-week phases. Added together it points towards autumn before life even resembles normality.

This, though, is a conservative timescale. Like the frightening vision of body bags it must never come to pass.

Instead, time can be ‘concertinaed’, with each phase shorter than currently envisaged.

Optimistically, when added together, each of those weeks and months can be trimmed.

The good news is that it is in the hands of islanders and no one else. We can play our parts by following the rules – social distancing, hand washing, reporting symptoms.

The first target is to get out of Phase 2. The island has been given four weeks to do that but, with the number of positive cases stuck at 252 for five days and active cases down to 16, there must be hope it can be less.

That said, at each stage there has to be an awareness that it takes weeks to know the full effects of more relaxed rules. We still, for example, cannot know the consequences of the return of more than 1,000 businesses.

This will be a slow process, come what may.