Health officials struggling with covid data gathering

Thursday 02 September 2021

Health officials have been struggling to gather data over which sections of the island's population have been the most affected by covid and which were more vaccine-hesitant.

The issues relating to data-gathering were discussed during a meeting of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Cell (STAC) on 5 July.

At the time of the meeting, there were 370 cases of covid in the island, and over 3,000 direct contact, with increasing numbers of people seeking healthcare due to concern over potential symptoms of the virus.

Professor Peter Bradley, the Director of Public Health, raised the issue of the work required to recognise which members of the population were the most affected by serious disease due to covid-19 or long covid - at the time, around 50 cases of the latter had been recorded.

Potential areas and cohorts of vulnerability were considered, including those who might be showing signs of vaccine hesitancy and clinical vulnerability. 

Dr Clare Newman, Senior Policy Officer for the Strategic Policy, Planning and Performance Department, said this level of data was difficult to obtain in Jersey but that the Ambulatory Emergency Care (AEC) team was trying to identify populations of concern.

Pictured: Data around the ethnicity of those accepting and refusing the vaccine is scarce.

Margaret Clarke, Principal Officer for Public Health Intelligence, said there had been “a paucity of case data” around the ethnicity of those accepting and refusing the vaccine. This was noted as being an issue that the Cell had found challenging during both the first and second waves of the pandemic.

Vaccine hesitancy was also discussed during the meeting, with the Cell noting the need to continue to “emphasise the importance of all eligible islanders taking the vaccination that was offered”. 

Behavioural scientist, Steve Martin, the Chief Executive Officer of Influence at Work, suggested the Cell should stress the message that 83% of islanders who were experiencing symptoms were not fully vaccinated.

Dr Ivan Muscat, MBE, the Deputy Medical Officer for Health voiced concerns over the fact that some islanders didn’t believe they needed to be fully vaccinated. 

Dr. Graham Root suggested that more focus should be given to “the social and travel freedoms” available to those who were fully vaccinated, reminding that  islanders would would only be sent a ”double vaccination certificate” to enable travel if they had received both jabs. 

Professor Bradley said the clear objective should be to prevent serious disease and death due to covid-19, whilst also noting that there would always be “vaccine hesitant groups and members of the population”.