I hope Guernsey will not take on too much debt

When the coronavirus epidemic struck and the lockdown began in the UK, possibly a little belatedly for some people, I thought wistfully of Guernsey, knowing how different it is with its easy-to-police border and its very small population.

Having looked at your local media on the internet it’s clear that the virus has been contained in Guernsey, which is great news. You should, as an island, be genuinely proud of your efforts to keep your people safe. It seems that the nine deaths* from Covid-19 have all been in care homes, the disease has not managed to pass through the hospital and I read that you have not even had a single patient on a ventilator. To add to that, you clearly have an excellent testing and tracing programme and reliable quarantine arrangements.

So, all very different from the UK.

We should take a leaf out of your book.

I was sure that you would therefore be bound to take a different approach from our lockdown, with all the immense collateral damage to the economy that we see in the UK and in some other European countries, but these countries have huge populations and porous borders.

I am puzzled then to read that this is not the case and why a lockdown paralysing almost everything stays as it is in Guernsey. It saddens me when I read about the 2,800 sole traders and private businesses that may now go out of business, as well as the hotels and beach cafes and the taxi drivers and everyone else who cannot work. It also worries me that those people are only being given £6 an hour, so are really being put into poverty. I do hope so much that those people who have made my stays on the island so enjoyable will not be bankrupted, although it isn’t looking good. Also, being a small place and having a micro economy and no Bank of England behind it, Guernsey could be in an exceptionally fragile position. I genuinely hope that the island will not take on so much debt that it will never be able to recover.

I am sure that if Guernsey’s low number of Covid-19 cases, excellent tracing and containment could be even partially replicated at the present time by any other country in Europe (or anywhere else for that matter), the governments of those countries, who are all desperate to reopen their economies, would have their working age populations back to work without delay to save themselves from an economic collapse. My family and I would hate to think that the people of your wonderful island, who have made our holidays there so enjoyable over the years, would suffer unnecessarily in this crisis.

C. J. DONOVAN

39, Greenbank Gardens,

Bath,

BA1 4EF.

* Letter sent before news of 10th death