'Covid was the biggest challenge I've faced'

On Sunday 29 March 2020, Jersey's then Chief Minister, Senator John Le Fondre announced that the island would be going into lockdown because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The restrictions announced meant that only essential workers would be allowed to leave home for more than two hours a day.

Five years on, the scientist who advised government on what to do to try to contain the spread of the virus said it was "the most challenging period of my life".

Dr Ivan Muscat, then the deputy medical officer of health, said it was a completely new infection which was "explosive".

He said: "It did not roll out slowly in the same way as HIV did. It rolled out immediately, virtually across the world, putting us all on the back foot.

"We obviously knew how to respond from an infection control point of view to a certain extent, but we continued to learn throughout the pandemic how to better respond to it.

"Nonetheless, we could not respond immediately to the scale that we were required because it had exploded across the world.

"When we did learn what we needed to do, we had to translate that into practise, on an industrial scale, and that was a huge additional task in its own right."

Dr Muscat said 129 death certificates mentioned Covid up to May 2022.

Looking back, would he do anything differently?

He said that was a difficult question to answer because he did not know what the outcome would have been if different decisions were made.

He said he thought the government acted as quickly as it could with the tools it had at the time.

He said: "I think it was, to a large extent, outside the hands of, not just this government, but other governments to respond as swiftly as they could.

"If we are going to be better able to face explosive pandemics, then we need to have prearrangements with industries to say: 'Something big is happening, please redirect your infrastructure to respond to this threat that we're facing' - be it production of PPE, be it production at an even greater scale of vaccines, production of drugs and diagnostic tests.

"That is something I think we should be working on now."

For islanders with underlying health conditions, having to shield themselves and limit contact with friends and family to reduce the risk of infection was incredibly difficult.

"The impact was enormous," said Angela Francey, who has had polio from birth.

She said: "I don't think I have ever felt so isolated and, had it not been for a couple of dear friends who did our shopping, I'm not sure how we would have coped.

"The one abiding memory is the peace and quiet. No planes, no cars and it was a surreal situation, but one of fear because we had to rely largely on the media to provide us with what was going on."

She said when the vaccine was rolled out, both her and her husband were "both ready with our sleeves rolled up" for the injections.

She said: "I think, without it, despite the negative comments... I was a huge supporter of the vaccine.

"I think we have moved on but there's always that 'but'. You just don't know what's round the corner."

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