"UK should look south for a role model!"

Tuesday 05 May 2020

Guernsey's community-wide efforts in the fight against covid-19 should be the envy of England's eye, HSC's President has said, following news that a UK "academic institution" has taken an interest in Guernsey's response to the crisis.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has declared his country is "past the peak" of its corona virus crisis, despite the UK still being in a state of strict lockdown.

Instead of looking across the world at places that have eased their way out of lockdown, Deputy Heidi Soulsby said last week that UK authorities should be looking closer to home. 

"The Guernsey community has been fantastic and has been an absolute role model," she said. "It does annoy me with the UK and the national news talking about what is going on in the rest of the world and saying these countries are doing this, that and the other and they’re out of lockdown, when you only have to look south and see what we’re doing.

"It’s only because the whole community is behind this. That’s why we might be out of this way sooner than we all could have imagined - because, and if, the community continues to work with us."

Hopefully as we move through the Phases, more bubbles can be added, until we reach an 'island bubble' - some way to go yet - no complacency - we have to move patiently and keep checking back that what we are doing is not imperiling the fantastic progress the whole island has made https://t.co/5k4Sy5EyAR

— Gavin St Pier #GuernseyTogether #StayAtHome (@gavinstpier) May 3, 2020

Pictured: Deputy Gavin St Pier says we have to be patient and ensure we don't endanger the progress that has been made. 

Since Deputy Soulsby said the UK should look south to see how Guernsey is doing, she has appeared on Radio 5 where she spoke to presenter Nicky Campbell about the island's approach to the corona virus pandemic.

She said "the people of Guernsey have been amazing" in sticking to the lockdown rules, as we move into phase two, and she described the 'bubbles' which have now been expanded to include two households. 

Guernsey's senior officials have stressed however that we must not get complacent and that adhering to the new, slightly eased restrictions will enable the island to move through the phases of its lockdown exit strategy quicker, as well as reducing the likelihood of stricter lockdown measures having to be re-enforced.

Director of Public Health Nicola Brink has been in dialogue with counterparts in the UK about the measures being taken to combat the spread of the corona virus.

She revealed that Guernsey's approach has piqued the interest of academic researchers from the mainland. 

"Interestingly we have had, in the last week, an academic institution contact us which is interested in the modelling we are doing," she said.

"We always said that we would have a community based programme and that we would test, contact trace and quarantine as a stalwart of our programme, so it wasn’t the World Health Organization’s "test, test, test" it was "test, test, test and contact trace and quarantine" and that is what we designed our programme on."

Pictured top: Deputy Heidi Soulsby.