The Civil Contingencies Authority is suspending the country and region categorisations temporarily, and treating all arrivals into the Bailiwick as ‘Category 4’.

The CCA says, while the non-essential travel ban is in place, it is right to designate all countries and regions as Category 4.

It says that will ‘give absolute clarity on its intentions regarding travel and to ensure the robustness of border restrictions’.

It means all arrivals must self-isolate for 21 days, or after receiving negative tests both on arrival and on day 13, regardless of their travel history.

The move had little impact on the vast majority of arriving passengers - as the destinations they are travelling from directly are already Category 4. 

The categories for countries and regions will be reintroduced when the non-essential travel ban is lifted. 

A ban on non-essential travel was brought in in response to high coronavirus rate elsewhere and concerns over new variants of the virus.  

Deputy Peter Ferbrache, Chair of the Civil Contingencies Authority said;

“We have less restrictive rules for some categories and right now, those are only on paper as in practice we know everyone coming to the Bailiwick is coming from a Category 4 region. But given we are treating travel with such seriousness that a ban has had to be introduced on non-essential journeys, we should also make absolutely clear that those who do arrive will be subject to our highest level of self-isolation and testing requirements."

Dr Nicola Brink, Director of Public Health says it is more important than ever to prevent the virus spreading within the Bailiwick:

 “Maintaining our good position has never been more important, as we see the consequences of community transmission of the virus in other jurisdictions and the emergence of variants of SARS-CoV-2.

If the virus is able to enter our community and if it results in community seeding, it’s possible we may need to introduce the kind of on-island restrictions we saw in the Spring of 2020 in the Bailiwick, and are currently seeing elsewhere, and that could have a real impact on the health and well-being of islanders, as well as on how quickly and effectively we can deliver the vaccines.

Given the global situation, we must be extremely careful and not underestimate the potential for our situation to change. Our self-isolation and testing requirements are rigorous, but they are our best way of preventing reseeding of our community with the virus.”