Concerns abound over unexplained community cases

Thursday 04 February 2021

Evidence of community seeding continues to cause "very serious" concerns, as the CCA nears its first scheduled review date of the current lockdown measures.

There have been 36 new cases found in the last day and 13 people have recovered, taking the number of known active cases to 329.

Of the new cases, 10 are from unknown community source, 25 are contacts of known cases and one is travel-associated. Five patients with Covid-19 are currently in hospital.

Civil Contingencies Authority Chairman Peter Ferbrache said the emergency decision-making body will meet tomorrow to review lockdown and what, if any, changes can be made to the current measures. 

Pictured: The live media briefing. 

Concerns have been expressed that the island continues to see community seeding.

"This virus is still very serious, this outbreak is still very serious," he said. "The figures are where we would want them to be in the sense that they have not increased exponentially, but it's still a matter of concern.

"We still have community seeding, we've still got investigations that need to be made so we must still be vigilant."

Public Health Director Dr Nicola Brink said the percentage of cases from unknown sources has reduced, however these figures are still open to fluctuation because of the small numbers involved. 

"As we progress through we want to see most identified through contacts and fewer identified through unknown community contacts," she said. 

"We are not out of the woods, we identified 10 new unknown community cases yesterday."