On-island testing coming soon

Friday 20 March 2020

With growing uncertainty over whether corona virus could be spreading through Guernsey's community, Public Health is pushing to get a local testing facility up and running as soon as possible.

At the moment, all local tests for covid-19 are sent off to the UK to be checked.

But, with a recent change of UK testing policy, it's now taking days for the results to be returned.

"Over the last 24-48 hours I have become increasingly concerned that I no longer have a sound evidence base to inform the decision making," said Director of Public Health, Dr Nicola Brink.

"The core part of our containment policy is the rapid identification of tests. Once you've identified, that person must self isolate - we have that part under control. Having said that, the next really important thing is contact tracing, so if you are waiting three or four days for a result, you can't get that timely contract tracing done and that is really important for the onward transmission."

Concerns have been confirmed by some of the island's GPs, who have recently seen patients showing symptoms of the virus without any travel history. At the moment, these people are not priority cases for testing.

"Our testing strategy has always been two fold," Dr Brink continued. "The first is to look at new cases being introduced, and that's been from everyone returning to the island who developed symptoms suggestive of covid-19. We've also been looking for community seeding within our hospital, where we've been testing independent of travel. We don't have evidence of community seeding in our hospital cases, but that is only one arm."

The lack of certainty over whether there is community spread has led to a number of changes to Guernsey's measures, including the closure of all schools from next week.

Pictured: Some hospital patients have been tested for the virus.

"We're doing this now because we haven't got the evidence at the moment, but as soon as we have we can then make the decisions to try and make things as normal as they can be," added President of Health & Social Care, Deputy Heidi Soulsby.

While Public Health awaits the delivery of testing equipment, the committee is working to see what other options are available in the meantime.

"We're looking at other options in the UK as we speak," Deputy Soulsby continued. "It's not as if we're just hanging around waiting for those results, there is a lot of work going on in the background to see what we can do and how we can expedite some of those tests.

"We're also assessing what the change in the UK policy has for us at the moment, because they're only doing hospital testing whereas we know, for us, that is not where we should be. We're in containment, but the UK is in delay."

Pictured: HSC President, Deputy Heidi Soulsby.

 It is hoped the on-island testing facilities will be set up over the next few weeks.

"We're expecting the imminent delivery of a key piece of kit over the next few days," said Dr Brink. "We'd normally set up a new assay in three or four months, so it's been pushed down to a very tight time frame.

"[With on-island testing], we can essentially control our own testing programme, so we can ramp up with a lot more testing. Our plan, if we're able to get testing on island, is to really broaden out our testing policies over the Easter break so we've got a really good handle of what's going on in the community.

"We're asking the community to work with us while we ascertain, at a very precise level, what is happening in our community."

Dr Brink apologised to all those still waiting for test results.

More information and advice on the virus is available here.