Cause of Guernsey’s latest Covid outbreak unlikely to be identified

Sunday 07 March 2021

It is looking increasingly likely that the cause of Guernsey's second wave of Covid-19 will never be identified.

Guernsey will be stepping into Stage 2 of its exit from lockdown on Monday, with just six active cases and seven days since a positive test was identified.

Despite this, the lockdown itself hasn’t been easy and the question of how this happened has been asked numerous times. The more transmissible Kent variant has been confirmed in the four original cases that triggered a second lockdown and in numerous cases sent away for tests since. 

Pictured: Dr Nicola Brink discussed the lessons learned from the latest outbreak, while confirming that we’ll probably never know where it began.

Guernsey began its second lockdown on 23 January when four cases of Covid-19 were discovered in the community with no clear source. The contact tracing team immediately got to work, discovering hundreds of cases with links to the Ship & Crown, the Guernsey Dance Festival and numerous schools.

Rumours were quashed by law enforcement at one point, as Facebook sleuths tried to figure out who was ‘responsible’, however 'patient zero' has never been found.

“We are convinced that this was an outbreak caused by the Kent variant,” said Dr Brink. “An outbreak being from a single introductory source – but we’ll probably never know what that source is.”

Pictured: 511 positive cases have been recorded during this outbreak.

“It’s frustrating [not finding the source] because of course you want to learn the appropriate lessons,” said Dr Brink. However, she said plenty of data has been collected and improvements have been made to the way the virus is tracked.

“I think the important thing is that we’ve learnt a lot about the Kent variant and how it behaves.

“For example; we’ve modified our contact tracing processes, in that we go back three days instead of two days before someone becomes symptomatic."