We got lucky over our New Year Covid cluster, the director of public health has admitted.

At last week’s Covid public question and answer session, Dr Henrietta Ewart was asked what could be done to avoid a situation like that currently facing Guernsey.

’The simple answer - we can’t,’ she replied.

Guernsey went into lockdown the weekend before last (January 23) after four Covid cases were detected which appeared to be the result of community transmission.

By this morning (Monday) there were 277 known active cases in the Bailiwick, with 46 new cases found in the last day alone.

In contrast, the Isle of Man was able to leave its circuit break lockdown today after recording no community cases for 20 days.

Dr Ewart said: ’We were almost like Guernsey just into the New Year when we had really quite a significant cluster.

’We are still doing the final analysis to really understand where it came from but at the moment we are pretty confident it came from a travel episode so we know how it got in.

’Guernsey are one step further down the line of uncertainty in at the moment they can’t link their cluster to a travel event.

’We were lucky. By the time we had managed to identify the issue we had got one line of transmission and we just had to follow that through with rigorous contact tracing and testing.

’They potentially have got a whole range of different lines of transmission that could be going all over the place in the community.’

Contact tracing around the recent diagnosed cases in Guernsey has identified that those attending the Festival of Dance, held at Beau Sejour leisure centre, between January 19 and 22 may have been exposed to one or more positive cases.

All those who attended the festival have all been asked to self-isolate.

Dr Nicola Brink, Guernsey's director of public health, said: 'There were large numbers who attended the festival, or live with someone who did.

'Some of those who attended may just now be becoming particularly infectious and potential spreaders of the virus.

'So if you were at the festival at any point, please self-isolate

as quickly as you can, and be alert to any symptoms developing for you or members of your household. By doing this, you’re really helping us keep the number of further cases down.'