Jersey policy bursts hopes of CI bubble

Regrettably, the chances look slim. The signs are that Jersey is looking more towards the UK market than its near neighbours.

Jersey has resolutely followed its own course throughout the coronavirus crisis.

It resisted the drive towards lockdown for a week longer than Guernsey and has followed a different testing regime that means that, even now, Jersey has completed about the same number of Covid-19 tests as Guernsey – for a population almost twice the size.

It has poured much of its efforts – and £14m. – into building a Nightingale wing to its hospital which opened last week after a month of frantic building.

Quite who is going to occupy the two new 30-bed wards is hard to judge. Although Jersey’s death toll is about double this island’s it has just seven patients in hospital and is currently adding only one new confirmed positive Covid-19 case a day.

Jersey’s Infrastructure minister hopes that the new wing will never be used.

However, it is expected to be in place for at least six months and the suspicion is that it is there to enable the island to speed up the lockdown release while confident that a second and third wave of infections can be coped with.

Last Monday, Jersey allowed restaurants and cafes to open and serve food and drink outdoors to socially distanced patrons.

Islanders can leave their homes for up to six hours each day and meet up to five people per day who are not from their household.

The speed of this release is causing tension. With Jersey’s R rate at 0.45 one deputy has called for the island to reject a policy of simply accepting the number of cases will rise as lockdown eases and instead go for an elimination strategy similar to Guernsey’s.

Unless it does, the dream of a Channel Island bubble will burst. For the two policies are incompatible.

As ever, the distance between the two Bailiwicks remains much more than 27 sea miles.