A total of ten sets of minutes covering STAC meetings between 5 January and 8 March have been released this week, with plans to ease Covid-19 restrictions featuring heavily in the documents.
Five pages of the minutes of the 8 February meeting are occupied by reconnection plans, with little evidence of a consensus among STAC members.
Dr Graham Root, independent public health adviser, said he could see no justification for having a minimum gap of three weeks between each stage of reconnection. The minutes list Dr Root’s view that the Island faced the lowest risk from Covid than it had at any time since the start of the pandemic – apart from during the height of last summer – and that, concurrently, Islanders were experiencing the greatest cumulative damage to the economy and their wellbeing, including their mental health.
Chief economic adviser Nick Vaughan agreed that the three-week gap was too long, saying that the cell had always pursued a balance of harms and suggesting that the aim was to attain a ‘tolerable level’ of risk. It was, he added, unhelpful to categorise the measured discussions in STAC as ‘health versus wealth’, but said he felt that, given the various control measures that were in place, it would be disproportionate to continue to impose too many constraints on Islanders.
Ian Cope, interim director of analytics and statistics, expressed concern about the possible reseeding of Covid-19 in the community as a result of relaxing border controls, while deputy medical officer of health Dr Ivan Muscat stressed the importance of progress in vaccination when considering the relaxation of measures.
The minutes quote Dr Muscat as saying that 90% of mortality would be avoided once all Islanders over the age of 70 had been vaccinated, with that figure rising to 99% once all over-50s had received their vaccination.
On 8 March, STAC members endorsed the decision of the panel looking at prioritisation of vaccination not to give priority to certain professions.
The minutes say that panel members were ‘reminded that any prioritisation would result in unequal access to a potentially lifesaving intervention’ and that retaining the system of age-related access, as in the UK, was the best option.
