Tourism Testing and Transparency

Robust Testing at Harbours: Clarity Needed

I came across this rather worrying note yesterday:

“According to some, there was no testing at the Albert Quay yesterday and arrivals were directed either to Elizabeth Terminal or to the airport testing facility. Whether that in either case there was a bussing arrangement or transport was by public bus - or simply allowed to wander off on trust, seems to be unclear.”

Now we are frequently assured about robust travel testing by Deputy Richard Renouf, which is especially important when there are French day trippers coming over to the Island, and I have no way of knowing the truth or not of this statement. It is, after all, hearsay. I am well aware of the unsubstantiated rumours which spread on social media and through out the community. 

But the fertile soil for such rumours is lack of clarity. Given enough transparency and detail, rum ours will die. So what we need are clear details of how passengers from ferries are checked, and some clarity on the following questions: 

With passenger arrivals is a cross-check made between arrivals tested and arrivals on the ferry company's passenger lists to ensure no one slips through the net?

Do passengers have to leave their arrivals port and go elsewhere to be tested? If so, how do they reach the test site - under their own steam or via special conveyance? If by themselves, what precautions are taken to ensure they do go for testing, and also go in a timely manner?

What is the protocol for contract tracing for day trip passengers if their test results come though after they have returned to France?

The latter is significant because there are over 900 test results pending, so the number of cases testing positive for the weekend will not really become apparent for a day or so.

Do we want to trust the experts when they put lives at risk?

Noticing the increase in numbers of cases being tested and awaiting results over the weekend and looking back at the documents for a previous States debate, the STAC Executive Memo of Advice, signed off by Patrick Armstrong on 15th June 2020 is particularly alarming:

“The number of people able to enter the island will depend on the ability to perform testing. The policy of testing on day 0, 4 and 7 continues to be discussed. Currently the day 0 swab can take between 48 hours and 4 days to return a result and on island testing capacity is limited. There are also anticipated limitations within the supply chain of testing equipment in larger volumes.

“To support arrivals testing, pre departure testing should be further explored. There may also be a need to be selective in the port of departure to prioritise testing. Not just by country but region within that country. The capacity of testing also needs to continue to cover activities such as pre-treatment screening, symptomatic cases. contact tracing and the healthcare worker screening schedules. This along with a need to return to larger volumes of travellers will require any testing and tracing processes put in place to be flexible in scalability. It is likely that as visitor numbers increase a point will be reached where it will not be practical or possible due to volumes to test all visitors. At that point an approach that involves testing sample numbers of visitors rather than all visitors would be the approach.”

This was repeated in the STAC memo of advice for 23 June 2020 by Patrick Armstrong:

“Moving forward it is likely that numbers of travellers will outstrip the islands capacity to test all arrivals and testing strategy is likely to move to one of testing travellers from higher risk countries or higher risk areas within countries particularly within the context of the UK.”

“Should an increase in cases occur, the tolerance will be based on capacity of the healthcare system and its demand to meet other island health needs including exceptions such as winter pressure. The actions to be taken to react to any case surge will need to be agreed and this could take the form of reducing traveller numbers and/or re-introducing protective measures on island.”

And it cheerfully concludes

“If cases surge then more restrictive measures may have to be reintroduced however with early intelligence and successful containment these would hopefully be less restrictive than full lockdown. Clear communications to ensure public confidence is maintained will be important.”

The Government is always saying it is “following the medical advice”, but to follow advice that - if numbers of visitors outstrips testing capacity, we don’t test everyone –would be a recipe for disaster and it does make me wonder if we need an independent review of the government’s medical advice, given the above STAC submission. How much reliance can we place on this expertise when it is so plainly wrong? 

And what does Patrick Armstrong say? Does he still agree with the STAC advice of those memos which has his name at the top? As he is clearly one of the experts, can we know if he still maintains that position? And if not, why not?

Fortunately, thanks to John Young’s recent proposition, the measure now introduced in last weeks States sitting is that:

“All persons should receive a PCR test on entry to our borders and in the event of the capacity of our testing facility being exceeded by the number of persons arriving at any one-time, untested persons should be held in isolation until tested.”