All elective and semi-urgent cancer surgery is to be cancelled with immediate effect.

Health Minister David Ashford said the move was essential now that the intensive care unit at Noble's had seen its first patient.

’This was an exceptionally difficult decision to make and one that hasn’t been taken lightly,’ he said, adding this was an action, taken on firm clinical advice, that ’we had held off doing as long as possible’.

Patients are being contacted and care plans discussed.

The total number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the island now stands at 49.

Of these, 47 patients have been instructed to self-isolate and two are being treated at the hospital, one of these in ICU.

Mr Ashford said most of the world has seen an older age profile for victims of coronavirus but this wasn’t what has happened in the island where most cases are aged between 19 and 35.

He said the message about social distancing and self-isolation was just as important regardless of what age bracket you are in.

The 111 service will now text test results, whether negative or positive. Those who have been tested should continue to self-isolate until their test result is back.

Testing of frontline staff is a priority, said Mr Ashford. An on-island testing facility should be up and running in the next couple of weeks.

Unlike the UK, he said, the island never stopped community testing so our trace-back was an ’awful lot better’.

In the next few days, the island will receive 95,000 personal protection equipment items to bolster current stocks.