Guernsey Press

Visitors unaware of medical costs

THE recommendation by the Daily Mail that Guernsey is the ideal holiday venue for those who are not immunised for Covid-19 might not be good news for visitors and, ultimately, might generate bad publicity for Guernsey.

Published

The article will almost inevitably result in some unimmunised visitors, unaware that they were incubating the infection, developing the active infection a few days after arrival. That is not something that should worry us as we now have a high immunisation rate and, besides, we have to face the infection eventually.

What we should be concerned about is that many UK visitors appear to be unaware that Guernsey isn’t part of the NHS and that there isn’t a reciprocal agreement on medical cover with the UK. Consequently, I do worry about unimmunised visitors coming here to Covid-free (bar one at the time of writing) Guernsey, thinking that they’ll be safe only to discover that they have been incubating it from before they left the UK.

It seems to me that very few visitors to Guernsey take out medical insurance (but I’m happy to be corrected) and should they develop Covid while in Guernsey they cannot just jump into their car to be driven home.

Instead they and their family will have to stay here isolating for two or more weeks until they test negative. This alone will rack up a somewhat larger hotel bill than they budgeted. However, if they are really unlucky, hospitalisation will run up a really ‘serious’ bill, most especially if ventilation or critical care becomes necessary.

What about those unable to pay? While it is perfectly acceptable for hotels to take their debtors to court, would Health & Social Care do likewise? I somehow doubt it in view of the unfavourable publicity that could be directed at Guernsey tourism, especially if a red-top hyped up the rhetoric – ‘suing a visitor who nearly died for the bill they cannot afford to pay’ (especially if it is pointed out that it wouldn’t have happened in Jersey or the Isle of Man which have reciprocal agreements).

I would hope that hotels would make sure that over the next few months they made prospective visitors aware that they should take out insurance before coming here (especially if not immunised) or run the risk of large hotel and medical bills.

I also hope that the States would strongly encourage them to do this because if it is not done, the hotel will likely be out of pocket and the taxpayer left covering the medical costs.

TONY LEE

Les Salines

Le Vallon

St Martin’s