The situation today...
Monday 04 May 2020
There are now as few 'active cases' of covid-19 in Guernsey as there were on the day the Bailiwick's schools closed to the majority of students in a bid to contain the potentially fatal corona virus.
On Friday 20 March, all early years facilities, schools and the College of Further Education sites across the Bailiwick closed, two weeks ahead of the scheduled Easter holidays, with only vulnerable students and the children of essential workers, attending lessons, at their schools since then.
All other students have been learning remotely supported by school and college staff since then.
Since March, the number of confirmed cases of corona virus have grown since the first patient was diagnosed on 9 March.
By yesterday, there were 252 confirmed positive patients - a figure which hasn't increased over the weekend. The number of fatalities is 13 with four presumptive deaths. There are now 217 'recovered patients' meaning just 21 were 'active' at the start of today.
Pictured: The latest data released by the States of Guernsey on Sunday 3 May.
Of the 'active' cases, one patient was still being teated at the Princess Elizabeth Hospital when the latest data was released by the States, yesterday. No one is being treated in Intensive Care.
Public Health staff continue to actively trace any known contacts of the active corona virus patients, and are analysing all of the data collated from the 252 positive patients so far.
Among the information gleaned from the data is proof that more women have been affected by the virus than men in Guernsey, with far fewer children or teenagers contracting covid-19 compared to older people, with a large number of cases confirmed in care homes in Guernsey.
No one has tested positive for the virus in any of the other islands in the Bailiwick.
Pictured: More women have had corona virus than men in Guernsey.
Two months ago there were no cases of corona virus in the Bailiwick, but after the first case was identified on 9 March, the decision was taken to close schools, colleges and early years facilities with effect from Friday 20 March.
By then there were just over 20 active cases, as there are now.
With Guernsey having successfully "squashed the curve" of covid-19, the peak was passed almost three weeks ago, according to the graph below, published by Public Health.
Pictured: The number of active cases of covid-19 shown.
Public Health has been monitoring the "trajectory of infections in the Bailiwick" since March with each positive test result plotted against the day that symptoms began or against testing date if no symptom-onset date is available.
Public Health said that they are assuming that for each positive test result, there may be 1.67 actual cases of coronavirus on the Island.
"This assumption is based on research which suggests that around 40% of infected individuals may be asymptomatic. In other words we assume that we are detecting all symptomatic cases but missing another 40% who are asymptomatic; this represents the expected proportion of asymptomatic / mild cases that are not recognised as cases. This is then used to estimate the new number of new actual cases each day. Using this information the trajectory of the increase of coronavirus cases can be plotted for the Bailiwick. A 5-day moving average is used to adjust for random fluctuation in daily cases and make the curve smoother and easier to analyse."
All of data collated and graphs published by Public Health can be seen HERE.
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