Five years on: How small Channel Islands confronted Covid
As the coronavirus pandemic rippled around the world five years ago, it took a while for it to reach the shores of the smallest Channel Islands.Alderney, Sark and Herm all moved together with Guernsey when lockdown was imposed on 25 March 2020 - despite not having any local cases of the virus.Dr Sally Simmons, clinical lead of the Island Medical Practice in Alderney at the time, said she was working on a model which showed up to 200 people could die from the virus, a staggering 10% of the island's population. In Sark, Seigneur Christopher Beaumont said the island "didn't need to be as strict" with its lockdown measures.Alderney recorded its first case of Covid on 5 February 2021 and Sark on 19 July 2021.
States of Alderney President William Tate led government communications in the island, addressing the roughly 2,000 people every morning on local radio."We had a massive take up by the community to the radio broadcasts, both here and internationally," he said."We had to buy more bandwidth because of the number of people listening in on the radio."I'm extremely proud of what we were able to achieve, because what we did was we got everybody in this community listening to and following the advice."
'Genuinely frightened'
Alderney's first case of the infection was a person who was already in self-isolation, and Dr Simmons said it was still a "shock" even though officials where expecting it."We thought we really thought we were going to get away with it," she said."We managed to isolate that person and interestingly that didn't spread, and we were kept quite free of Covid for another couple of months."
Tate, who was leading the island's response alongside Dr Simmons, said he still feels cold about some of the discussions."One of the topics of discussion was how many refrigerated containers we might need," he said."That made it very real, that is a real memory for me."It's the first time I've been genuinely frightened in my life."
Christopher Beaumont, Seigneur of Sark, said he felt the island was "extremely good at looking after itself"."At the time, I thought the lockdown was sensible, but in my view it was kept in place slightly longer than necessary," he said."I think we could have come out of that in Sark earlier than Guernsey did."He said not having a furlough scheme had a "noticeably quick" impact on islanders."Sark, being the community it is, takes care of people who can't take care of themselves," he said."We demonstrated that in spades, and I don't see any change to that five years on."
Like many other places around the world, the hospitality sectors of smaller islands were dealt huge blows due to social distancing restrictions.Tracey Farquar-Beck, who opened the Blonde Hedgehog Hotel in Alderney in 2019, said she felt "panicked" as lockdown loomed.She said: "We have a brand new business, we have no financial cushion to fall back on, what are we going to do? How long will we survive? "What do we do with all of the staff because some of the staff we recruited from different countries? Should we send them home? If we send them home, how will we get them back?"
By June 2020, the islands had come out of their first lockdown and the "bailiwick bubble" was created.It meant people could move freely between Guernsey, Herm, Sark and Alderney without any need to isolate.Mrs Farquard-Beck said the policy was a "lifesaver" for her business."If we had had to shut like the places in the UK, where some of them were closed down for almost a year, that would have been devastating for us as a new business," she said.
At Stocks Hotel in Sark, seasonal staff arrived a week before the lockdown, and director Paul Armorgie had to tell them to leave the island until further notice."You've put so much planning into what you do, and suddenly you have the rug pulled from underneath you," he said."It was a watershed moment for our business and for Sark."
Boom times end
Mr Armorgie said the industry was still feeling the impact of Covid-19 and Brexit five years on."Initially we had the benefit of the bailiwick bubble and we boomed," he said."We were seeing guests from Guernsey who usually travelled much further afield, who were rediscovering Sark."That dropped away as the other borders opened up, and then we took a dip."We haven't returned to those pre-Covid levels. Our business has plateaued."
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