Threats of violence have been made to vaccination hub staff when they asked someone to wear a mask, it’s been revealed.

Health Minister David Ashford told this afternoon’s press briefing: ’The overwhelming majority are happy to follow the rules that are in place.

’Aggression to vaccination hub staff will not be tolerated. With incidents like this the person will be refused vaccination and the police will be called. We take the protection of our staff seriously.’

There has been one new case of Covid in the last 24 hours but it is linked to a known source and was already in self-isolation.

It takes the number of active cases to 109, with one in hospital.

Vaccination invitation letters have now gone out to the 40 to 45 age group and over the next week they will go out to those aged 35 to 39.

Some 55% of adults and 48% of the entire population have had at least one jab.

Mr Ashford said the island will follow the UK regulator, the MHRA, if age restrictions are brought in on the use of the AstraZeneca jab following a review of any potential link to rare blood clot cases.

The island has now gone 13 days with only a singe unknown case which was detected on the March 29.

Chief Minister Howard Quayle said: ’If it had not been for that case, we would be starting to breathe a sigh of relief and talking about the end of this lockdown. We are edging closer to that point - but that single case does remain a niggle.’

’In a few more days, I hope we will be more confident that the case on the 29th is no longer a cause for concern. As it is, we can be cautiously optimistic that the outbreak is under control.

’We are not going to reset the clock every time we see a case. And we will not let a single case derail our steady progress towards normality.’

Mr Quayle said he hoped that the opening of the garden centres today is the start of a safe and steady reopening of our retail sector.

There are a number of sectors that may be able to follow soon, he said. These include non-essential retail, our lifestyle businesses and other areas where some mitigation measures can be retained.

The Council of Ministers will look at this again on Thursday.‘We still hope to able to lift the majority of measures on or around 19 April,’ said Mr Quayle.

’We do hope to be able to allow non-essential retail to open soon. If we are able to do so, this may not include our lifestyle businesses immediately. Those businesses like hairdressers, barbers and beauticians.

’But we hope that all being well, they will be able to follow soon after.’