DE-ESCALATION of the Island’s Covid-19 response will begin on Tuesday, with a return to near normality within the next two months.
At a press conference yesterday, ministers outlined a series of steps to ease current measures, including scrapping compulsory mask-wearing and work-from-home guidance next week and dropping mandatory isolation for people with Covid by 31 March, although a definite date for this is yet to be announced.
The move signals that the ‘emergency period’ of the pandemic will be over by the end of March, two years after the Island went into lockdown.
The Safer Travel Policy and associated testing regime introduced in July 2020 will be suspended from 7 February, with no requirement for arriving passengers to fill in travel forms or demonstrate their vaccination status from that date.
Speaking at the press conference yesterday afternoon, Chief Minister John Le Fondré said: ‘This marks the end of our emergency period, but we must still be vigilant and continue to act responsibly.
‘Acts such as taking lateral-flow tests, taking a walk outside when meeting someone and getting vaccinated are steps that will reduce risk and help keep each other safe.’
Health officials outlined the background to the de-escalation moves at an earlier briefing. This included evidence about the risk of fatality during the current winter compared with the ‘second wave’ of Covid 12 months ago.
Although the current wave has seen almost 20,000 cases so far, the risk of death was quoted as 0.1%, compared with a figure of 1.3% for 2020/21, when 2,900 cases were recorded.
Dr Ivan Muscat, deputy medical officer of health, said that the current Covid mortality rate was comparable to the level that would be caused by influenza, while Senator Le Fondré described the latest evidence as ‘very, very compelling’.
The first steps of the de-escalation process will occur at one minute past midnight on Tuesday, as the legal requirement to wear masks in designated indoor public spaces will lapse. Existing policies about mask-wearing in schools and healthcare settings will remain in place, while LibertyBus has confirmed that masks will remain a condition of carriage for passengers.
Work-from-home guidance, which was reintroduced on the first working day of 2022, will be withdrawn from Tuesday.
Significant changes to contact-tracing arrangements will be introduced by 7 February, with the government – and schools – no longer taking an active role in this process and individuals encouraged to notify their own contacts should they test positive. Businesses will not be obliged to collect customers’ contact details.
Testing procedures are also due to change during the first week of February. The recommendation for Islanders to screen themselves using lateral-flow tests will shift to advice to carry out such tests twice a week. There will be no requirement to report negative results. Daily testing is still recommended for those going into schools or healthcare settings, and PCR testing will remain for anyone who has symptoms or receives a positive LFT result.
Most existing measures in schools will remain in place, with the Chief Minister saying it was necessary for the education system to ‘get over the hump’ created by a spike in cases of the infectious Omicron strain. He revealed that 100 air-filtration units had been ordered to improve ventilation in schools.
The move to Islanders taking responsibility for Covid-related matters is also reflected in the intention to stop mandatory isolation for positive cases by the end of March.
Director of public health policy Alex Khaldi said that while isolation would no longer be underpinned by law from April onwards, there would be ‘strong guidance’ relating to a ‘moral obligation’ for those who were symptomatic or had tested positive.
‘There won’t be a law but it would be irresponsible of any Islander to go out if they are symptomatic,’ he said.
As part of the de-escalation process, the majority of laws and regulations regarding Covid are scheduled to lapse by 31 March, although the overall ‘enabling law’ will remain in place, at least until August, allowing the government to bring back measures in the event of a change of circumstances.
A post-emergency Covid-19 strategy is to be developed for approval by ministers and publication before the end of February.
lA sharp rise in the number of known positive cases of Covid seen on Thursday was likely to be explained by a ‘glitch’ in the reporting system, the government has said. A spokesperson said there had been two occasions this month where the full number of recoveries had not been on the system at the time case numbers were reported, with recoveries added the following day. After climbing by 355 on Thursday, total cases dropped by 181 yesterday to 2,156.
