WATCH: Antibody test results to be released tomorrow

Thursday 07 May 2020

Islanders will tomorrow find out the accuracy of predictions that Jersey has ten times more covid-19 cases than those officially confirmed, as the government releases the results of its antibody test regime.

The pilot programme of pin-prick blood tests to establish who might have immunity from the virus started last weekend, with an aim of 500 households being examined, and concluded this Tuesday.

The results of that process are being discussed at an Emergencies Council meeting this afternoon and are likely to influence whether Jersey eases down to 'Soft Lockdown' (Level Three) next week - a decision which the Health Minister, Deputy Richard Renouf, still has to sign off.

Asked by Express whether the Government would be relaxing lockdown measures even further on Tuesday 12 May, as stated at a previous press conference, the Chief Minister confirmed that the government anticipated doing so.

Video: The Chief Minister, the Health Minister and the Medical Director took part in a conference today.

“Where we are at today is there is an expectation that things will change on Monday but that is obviously very much predicated on the final piece of medical advice to come through and the decision that Richard as Minister will have to be signing off,” he explained. 

“We can’t say today that it is definitely happening what we can say today is that we anticipate and that’s all depending on something coming out from left field that we are not expecting at this stage." 

If the so-called 'Soft Lockdown' starts on Tuesday, it will mean that less than two weeks have passed since restrictions were first eased - despite the incubation period for covid-19 being 14 days.

Pictured: The Government expects to enter phase 3 of the lockdown plan on Tuesday.

Questioned about this by Express, Patrick Armstrong, Medical Director, described the relaxations as "wellbeing measures", which were minor adjustments expected to only have a “very minimal effect” on the spread of the virus.

“The risk of contracting the virus outside is much less than the risk of contracting the virus inside,” he explained. “It’s much less if you are not around large groups of people and it’s much less if you keep maintaining distance from people.”

Acting Medical Officer for Health, Dr Ivan Muscat, previously stated that for every islander with covid-19, there were likely 10 more infected people. With the number of officially confirmed covid-19 patients currently standing at nearly 300, this means there could be up to 3,000 cases in the island.

The Chief Minister did not state whether antibody tests rolled out last weekend and the household survey, which has been completed by 10,000 households so far, had confirmed or disproven the theory, when asked by Express. 

Pictured: Mr Armstrong said that the antibody tests were believed to be about 80% accurate.

However, he pledged that the results would be put into the public domain tomorrow - even though the testing programme, which gives participants their results right away, started last Saturday and concluded on Tuesday.

Later on in the conference, Mr Armstrong addressed the margins of error in testing the Health Department has been working with so far.  

He said the antibody tests were believed to be about 80% accurate. He added that they were however helping “build a picture over a period of time”.

Mr Armstrong also confirmed that some people had been tested more than once and had received a different result.