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More than 3,000 free lateral flow home test kits were ordered on Tuesday on the first day of their availability.
Islanders were invited by the Government to register from yesterday to have their testing kits sent to them via the post, and receive a code, which will be used when uploading test results to gov.je.
As of 16:15 on Tuesday, 3,157 registrations had been received. The Government said it would comment on the response to its home testing regime after a week.
The free lateral flow testing kits are part of the Government’s Covid Winter Strategy, which it announced last week.
Pictured: Islanders are asked to put the results of their lateral flow tests into an online platform.
While fully vaccinated people, individuals with a negative pre-departure test and those who have recently had covid will no longer be tested on arrival into Jersey from next Tuesday, Ministers want islanders over the age of 12 to test themselves more frequently during the festive period – particularly if they are returning from travels or seeing vulnerable or elderly people.
This will result in a drop in border testing of around 80%.
However, the Chief Minister said that, with the home test regime, this shouldn't impact Jersey's ability to detect covid.
“Whilst we are reducing the testing at the border in respect of those who are fully vaccinated – what we are replacing this with is an intention to test more people on a weekly basis, using LFTs. We do rely on you as islanders to help us in this cause. If you register, and take the tests, together we can protect the community even more than what we are doing at present.”
Islanders are encouraged to take a test once they receive the box of devices and then test themselves at least twice a week.
They are also being asked to perform a test before visiting at-risk family members or friends, or before socialising with those who they would not see on a regular basis.
All results should then be put into an online portal. Any positive results will be automatically flagged to the Government's Covid Safe team, who will schedule a PCR test to confirm the result.
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