‘Island groups should trial coronavirus exit strategy,’ according to leading professor

April 16, 2020 at 10:45 am

Orkney’s low number of test-confirmed cases of coronavirus makes the islands a good place to trial an exit strategy from coronavirus, according to Professor Pennington.

Orkney and the Western Isles should be used to trial the Scotland’s exit strategy from the grip of the coronavirus pandemic.

That is the view of a leading microbiologist from Aberdeen University, who says the two island groups’ low confirmed coronavirus cases make them “obvious candidates to be the test beds for an exit strategy for the country”.

Professor Hugh Pennington, emeritus professor of bacteriology, is quoted in The Herald, saying: “Travel is restricted because they are islands and have extremely low levels of confirmed cases.

“You can control access to them and re-open things like shops and churches etc and get back gradually to normal life again.

“As for people travelling to the islands, it is to be remembered that the vast majority of people have not been affected [by the virus].”

He added: “The key is to get testing up in those islands because if anybody showed signs of having the virus they could be quickly tested and aggressive contact tracing implemented. That is the eventual way out of this.”

Professor Pennington, who has chaired E.coli outbreak inquiries and in 2013, was awarded a CBE for services to microbiology, believed the system could then be recreated on a large scale in other health board areas of Scotland.

“The islands have good medical facilities, but you would need to have good and effective testing facilities in place with a quick result. It would not cost a lot of money.

“It would be an example for the rest of the country as long as there was an early warning system in place. It could then be possible for the Highlands and Grampian to follow.

“Hotspots will not last because people will either recover or sadly die. So we have to think of how we are going to get out of this.

“Overall cases need to come down substantially — by about ten times — for the lockdown to be lifted throughout the country. That is why we need test beds where levels are already low.

“The virus has been spreading under the radar into places like care homes, presumably by workers who were unaware they were infected. The testing needs ramping up. The best you can say overall is that it is not now out of control, but we do not yet have control over it.”

Professor Pennington, who has also been appointed by the Scottish Police Federation as a coronavirus advisor, warned that a vaccine will reduce the number of COVID-19 deaths, but will not offer complete protection or eradicate the virus.