Government ‘cautious’ after four test positive at same venue

Tuesday 29 September 2020

The Government says it is responding ‘cautiously’ to four individuals testing positive for covid after visiting the same venue - but doesn't yet believe it provides evidence of the virus moving within the community.

Yesterday it was announced that two household members of one of the new cases have now also tested positive.

The Government said that “all the evidence is that this is a mixture of cases – some arrivals, some essentially household cases.”

Community transmission, meanwhile, refers to cases where the source of infection cannot be identified. 

The Government’s contact tracing team is now contacting individuals who visited the same venue as the four and arranging tests “where appropriate." The name is the venue is not being released. 

Pictured: The contact tracing team are in the process of contacting people that visited the same venue.

“Officials are contact-tracing more widely in keeping with a cautious response to any covid activity,” the spokesperson added.

According to a statement released last night, the four visited the unnamed venue on 16 and 17 September. Two visited at the same time and another two visited “separately and at different times”.

Two of the four that had visited the venue had arrived from London on separate flights.  After being informed that their border test had returned a positive result, they went into isolation where they will remain until their 14-day quarantine period expires.

All their direct contacts have tested negative.

The third individual was identified once they had returned to the UK after visiting family in Jersey. The fourth case was an individual this person had been staying with in Jersey. Two more individuals within that household have now tested positive.

The Deputy Medical Officer of Health, Dr Ivan Muscat, said: “This shows our test and tracing works. We have systems in place to identify contacts of people who test positive, and these cases demonstrate that we can respond quickly to minimise the risk of further cases."

Pictured: Dr Muscat said the recent cases being picked up showed the effectiveness of the test and trace system.

He continued: “The venue visited by the four people has an excellent contact-tracing system in place and was able to share all required information at speed. This is as a timely reminder of the importance of all Jersey venues collecting accurate data on every customer, and of individuals cooperating with the authorities when asked to self-isolate as a direct contact of a positive case.”