The Scientific and Technical Advisory Cell (STAC) has stated there would be ‘practical, ethical, moral and political challenges’ to the proposal by three backbench politicians.
Senators Kristina Moore and Steve Pallett, along with Deputy Steve Luce, had written to STAC about plans to have the entire Island population tested twice during a four to six-week period as a way of eliminating the virus.
STAC chair Patrick Armstrong responded to the trio of States Members on Saturday following discussions among the cell last week.
While he described the proposal as ‘interesting’ and admitted ‘the overall idea is attractive’, Mr Armstrong said there were a number of difficulties.
Jersey was differently-placed to the UK, he added, and the proposals would necessitate introducing significantly harsher measures [to the UK] at a point when Jersey was in a position to move to a less restricted environment.
STAC saw a number of practical challenges, Mr Armstrong said, including:
How to restrict movement and mixing on the Island while testing the entire population.
Concern that the self-administered test would not be used properly, and the risk of false negative results.
The strain on resources.
The ‘very significant ethical and moral challenges in terms of testing a whole population’ with particular difficulties relating to children and adults with dementia.
Mr Armstrong said that Jersey would need to learn to co-exist with the virus, especially with different variants being picked up globally.
Vaccination was a key issue, the response from STAC continued, with Jersey’s programme on track to have covered all over-50s and other vulnerable Islanders within approximately eight weeks.
‘It would seem more sensible to continue with our current strategy rather than suddenly change direction to something, that as far as we are aware, has not been proven to work in another jurisdiction over the medium and longer term,’ Mr Armstrong wrote.
Mr Armstrong said that STAC’s view was that ‘for the foreseeable future the current tight restrictions on the border will need to remain in place until we have a better idea of the impact of the vaccine’.
