CCA to “wean people off” daily covid stats

Sunday 15 August 2021

The States of Guernsey could soon begin to wind down its daily Covid-19 updates following "numerous conversations" about how often it puts out posts on social media.

At the moment the States of Guernsey continues to update its social media accounts with daily vaccination statistics and positive cases.

However, it has been argued that this keeps the issue too prominently in the public consciousness, while overloading people with information instead of just conveying major updates.

1/ We currently have one case of COVID-19 in the hospital post-second wave. We now have 83 (known) active cases of COVID-19 in the Bailiwick.

14 new cases have been identified in the Bailiwick, all in Guernsey. pic.twitter.com/vTzZIwA0vo

— States of Guernsey (@Govgg) August 13, 2021

Pictured: The SOG Twitter updates followers daily on the most recent covid stats.

The topic has been discussed heavily within the CCA, according to the Director of Public Health, Dr Nicola Brink.

“I think it’s a really valid point,” she said, when asked what the merit is to regularly pushing out the information, which can all be found on the States website for any who wants it.

“[It’s a topic] that we’ve had numerous conversations about. If we do give out the information people get upset and if we don’t give out information, they can’t see reminders.

“I don’t know the right answer and we’ve jumped from either side of the fence,” she said.

Pictured: “We are going to try and ween people off [daily stats], but if we were to do it tomorrow people would say ‘you must have another 30/50 cases, why aren’t you telling us’ so it is a difficult balance,” said the Head of the CCA, Deputy Peter Ferbrache.

Dr Brink said a provisional decision has been made on what do next.

“What we are planning to do is, wait until the end of vaccination programme and produce a dashboard which will be on our website.

“It’ll include, for example; number of cases, 14 day rate, vaccination rate, deaths – key information like that, so people who want to get it can go there,” she said.

“But the key is to wait until the end of our vaccination programme – once we’ve done that, we’ve done all we can from an intervention point of view.”

It is not yet known how this tallies with another Public Health announcement that the Bailiwick's vaccination programme will be extended through booster jabs.