'It's changed everything' - Covid-19 five years on

A Guernsey women who caught Covid-19 in 2021 says it has changed everything she "can and can't do".

Tamara O'Brien developed "long Covid" after contracting the virus during Guernsey's second lockdown. She said: "I struggle to walk too far, up and down the stairs, I get pins and needles all over my face and my eyes."

Following her diagnosis, Ms O'Brien set up an online support group for other island people with the condition.

Ms O'Brien is one of the islanders who have been speaking to BBC Guernsey about the pandemic's long-term affect on people's health to mark the fifth anniversary of the island's first Covid-19 lockdown on March 25 2025.

Planning ahead for even the most mundane tasks is now a necessity for Ms O'Brien.

"Once the kids have gone to school and things need doing around the house I have to think, what can I do and what can't I do?"

Despite her illness, Ms O'Brien said she was still able to enjoy time with her children.

"They're quite understanding, they know that mummy has sore knees or mummy gets tired very easily," she said.

"They know mummy is too tired to go to the park so let's do something else, we're quite big into craft.

"And I say if I rest today we can do something tomorrow, so we still get to do activities, we have just changed what we do and when we do it."

Anita Davies, an antenatal teacher, told how she moved her classes online following request from new parents for her to continue supporting them.

"Once Guernsey went into lockdown, I was very much 'sorry, that's it'. They were begging me 'please just try anything at all'," she said.

"I had never done anything online so it was a real leap of faith, for all of us actually, I'm very thankful for those first couples who encouraged me to take something online or else they had nothing to prepare them for the time ahead."

Ms Davies said that some parents felt they gained from raising their babies during lockdown.

"They could just focus on being new parents with their baby and not have to worry about getting out of the house or the partner going back to work.

"There were one or two that I know really deeply struggled and I think we weren't like the UK, which seemed to go on forever with their lockdown.

"In Guernsey there wasn't too long before we could have those bubbles and things started to open up, the two hour walking windows everyday, things like that.

"I think that made such a huge difference to mental health rather than being in four walls and knowing that you could just walk along a path and you'd cross another person on the other side of the street."

Margaret Nicolle, who works at Age Concern Guernsey, said she spent hours on the phone to the charity's users during lockdown.

"We phoned some people more than others because they were having a harder time and I think I phoned every three or four weeks unless I felt I needed to call more frequently," she said.

"It's fairly obvious who was getting lots of attention from their families and others who were really being pulled down by it."

Some members of Age Concern suffer with dementia, a condition which doctors say can be accelerated by high stress situations.

Mrs Nicolle said it was very difficult for the charity to help sufferers.

"Depending on their level of dementia or similar conditions, sometimes it would confuse them more, so we had to be careful.

"We had several people who are in the care homes so at least we knew that they were seeing people more regularly."

During lockdown cancer screening programmes were either stopped or scaled back.

Dr Nicola Brink, Guernsey's director of public health, said it was still not clear the impact that break in testing had on the island's cancer rates.

"After lockdown, the numbers of those getting checked didn't pick up as we thought and we think some people didn't want to go to a health care facility because of the perceived fear, especially in the early days, of catching Covid," she said.

"I would encourage all eligible people to go for you cervical screening, your breast screen and to return the bowel cancer test."

The latest cancer report, which looks at numbers from across both Guernsey and Jersey, included data up to 2020 so doesn't show rates of the disease following lockdown.

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