CCA relaxes covid rules

Wednesday 19 January 2022

Covid tests and isolation requirements have been scrapped for anyone entering the Bailiwick from within the Common Travel Area.

Fully vaccinated travellers entering from anywhere else now need to take a lateral flow test rather than a PCR test on the day they arrive.

These changes are effective from this morning.

But unvaccinated travellers coming from outside the Common Travel Area must still take PCR tests on arrival and eight days later and isolate in between.

From Monday next week – 24 January – the request to work from home will be lifted and the isolation period for people with covid will be changed from seven days to six days provided they have a negative lateral flow test on days five and six. 

The Civil Contingencies Authority had trailed the changes last week and confirmed them yesterday evening as the number of known cases of covid continued to fall. Known cases are currently around a quarter of the number they reached at the recent peak of the omicron variant.

The Authority will meet again next week to “consider further relaxation of measures and a timeline for de-escalation of emergency measures”.

Pictured: As well as announcing the relaxation of a range of covid rules to take effect over the next few days, the Civil Contingencies Authority is already suggesting that they will be able to liberalise rules further when they meet next week. 

Deputy Peter Ferbrache, Chairman of the Authority, said:

“We’ve seen a very encouraging, steep drop in positive cases in recent days and, while we also greet such good news with a degree of caution based on how quickly things can change, it has further enhanced the Authority’s collective view that we can and should begin to remove measures in a steady and sensible way.

“I hope that today’s announcement will be welcome news for the community and I want to thank everyone for the high levels of uptake we see on the mitigations in place as by and large people continue to want to do the right thing.

“We announced last week our intention to ease border restrictions from [today] and I’m pleased to say that decision was confirmed at our meeting [yesterday]. This largely brings us in line with the UK’s border restrictions.

“But we also looked at internal measures and discussed at length what further changes we could make to ease the impact covid-19 has on people’s lives.

“I’m sure a further reduction in self-isolation requirements, provided certain criteria are met, will be welcome news for many and we have also decided to remove our guidance for people to work from home wherever possible. Both of those changes come into effect from Monday just to allow a little more time to hopefully see a further reduction in case numbers.

Pictured: The States released the latest covid testing figures late yesterday afternoon. 

“Additionally, members of the Authority recognise that we need to provide the community with as much certainty as possible about our end game plans. What I mean by that is when we can plan, as reasonably as possible, to further reduce or remove the remaining mitigations which the Authority has imposed for the purposes of dealing with this global public health emergency.

“Many within the community have asked whether the Bailiwick needs to continue relying on emergency powers to manage covid-19 in the context of a highly vaccinated population. This is what we will consider next week.

“Whatever the Authority decides, I think it’s important for all of us to recognise that covid is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

“That means that even in the absence of mandated restrictions, we will all need to continue living responsibly with the virus and that will mean continuing to do the right things – for example, following any face covering guidance, taking regular lateral flow tests and staying at home when unwell.

“The single most powerful defence we have against the variants of covid-19 in the Bailiwick right now is our booster programme, so I’ll take this opportunity to remind people over the age of 18 to please get their booster if they haven’t already done so.”