Same message is helped by a different voice
A DIFFERENT voice from the Civil Contingencies Authority but the same message delivered yesterday.
Deputy Heidi Soulsby, a connection to the past when the CCA was more popular, and arguably better listened to, took the chair for yesterday’s press conference. And although it didn’t stop a question about whether Deputy Ferbrache should have worn a mask at the Cenotaph in London last weekend – quickly dodged – it was perhaps useful for the CCA to have a new spokesperson.
The message remained the same – gentle encouragement, not mandatory actions. ‘Some will think we’ve made the right decision, some won’t,’ said Deputy Soulsby.
If today's numbers of positive cases were being seen six months ago, Deputy Soulsby said she would have been clamouring for mandatory masks. But the reliance is now on vaccination as the island’s primary weapon against Covid, backed by some 92% of all adults having had two doses.
And while the PEH might be busy, it’s not Covid busy, and hence the CCA falls on the side of persuasion rather than compulsion.
The game changer in Tuesday’s CCA discussions though? As Deputy Soulsby said yesterday: ‘What really made the difference is you.’
The response – at the second time of asking – to face masks has been much improved. And Deputy Soulsby struck an encouraging and supportive tone. Ten minutes with a mask on in a shop? That’s better than nothing. You’re still stopping transmissions.
The CCA is now expecting, hoping, that nothing gets worse before Christmas. And our response is critical to the success of that. But also a factor in this improved #GuernseyTogether spirit is that the reality of Covid in the island will have changed for many in the past week or so.
Contact tracing is now in touch with hundreds, thousands. The lateral flow test has switched from an inconvenience to a necessity for many.
A few hundred families may now be dealing with isolation at home for the first time, learning that where Covid was something remote, which happened to someone else, suddenly it is happening to you and yours. And nothing will do more for compliance than the wake up call of a real case.