Guernsey Press

Health can't step away from Covid

PACKING away the Covid tent on the East Arm of St Peter Port Harbour this week feels like a symbolic gesture for the island’s response to Covid.

Published

It coincided with patient numbers rising again over the past week – but will anyone be that worried?

Some in the community might still be fearful of Covid and shielding, and you still see the odd mask in a public place, but by and large, we have moved on from Covid in our day-to-day lives.

To coin a phrase, we’re ‘living responsibly with Covid’.

The weekly patient statistics are largely discredited now as many don’t believe that people do actually still contact Public Health after a positive LFT test.

Remarkably though, we are just nine weeks on since our front-page headline read: ‘Covid infections “may be 5,000” – and rising fast’, when Covid sub-variants were flashing through our community, but even before the latest booster roll out had gone anywhere, those numbers had crashed again.

Covid cases in hospital, long the test for whether the island ever had Covid under control, have remained steady over those subsequent weeks.

But while many of us mentally step away from Covid, and the fear of the virus, the hospital and health services need to remain on alert, and embedding Covid protocols into its routine business will remain for some time, and continue to be a drag on resources.