WATCH: "We need to work as a community"

Monday 09 March 2020

The risk to the Guernsey public following the first confirmed case of COVID-19 is "very low", according to the Director of Public Health, who is encouraging people not to panic.

The patient, who received a positive test result yesterday, is now in compulsory quarantine in their own home.

Their family members, including one teenager, are also in self isolation as a precautionary measure.

The patient developed symptoms of coronavirus a few days after returning from a trip to Tenerife.

"We identified the case at 16:30 yesterday [Sunday] afternoon and the person went into quarantine at 17:30," Dr Nicola Brink explained. "The family and the person are doing well, I am pleased to report."

The person is expected to make a full recovery.

Public Health Services staff have already begun a process of 'contact tracing', and will be getting in touch with everyone the patient has been in contact with since 24 hours before their symptoms began.

"We're optimistic that we'll be able to get hold of the contacts and provide the necessary support and care for them," Dr Brink continued. "It's important that we have a calm, measured and proportionate approach, because we want people to come forward, knowing that they are supported through the whole process."

Members of the public are also being encouraged to stay calm while taking simple precautions, like avoiding close contact with people who are unwell and following good hygiene practices.

"We'd really ask the public of Guernsey to work with us on this and look at confirmed sources of information," added Dr Brink. 

"We'd absolutely discourage people from panic buying. We need to work as a community here and if people go and buy lots of products and deplete the shelves, that's not good for our community as a whole. We need to act in a responsible way and not only consider ourselves, but our entire community."

Public Health Services have been preparing for a COVID-19 case for some time and are working with other local organisations to prevent and prepare.

"Our hospital is well prepared, so for example we have what we call negative pressure rooms, which suck in air rather than blow it out," Dr Brink explained. "We know if someone required hospital admission, where we would put Patient One, Patient Two. If someone required critical care support, we know where we would put that person.

"There's also been planning in primary care - how you would manage people in a home situation. We've worked with the emergency services to look at how we can do screening, so we have a screening service up at the hospital with rapid screening. We've also been looking at how we do self isolation at home, so how we not only look after a person medically, but how we look after their whole wellbeing.

"There are plans that have been in place. When we got the diagnosis late yesterday afternoon we just swung into action because we knew exactly what we had to do."

 More information and advice is available here, along with two dedicated coronavirus helplines.

"If people have concerns or conversations they want to have, we're always available," said Dr Brink. "There's a public health person on call 24/7 and we're happy to take phone calls from people whenever they're concerned."

Pictured top inset: Dr Nicola Brink.