Government of Jersey to begin COVID-19 community antibody testing

The Government of Jersey is to begin testing islanders for COVID-19 antibodies this weekend. 

Randomly selected households will be contacted by letter and phone from today, and appointments will then be offered at one of three testing sites across the island. The selected Islanders will be tested from Saturday 2 to Tuesday 5 May inclusive. The test is a simple finger-prick test, using a single drop of blood, and results will be ready ten minutes later. 

We will also record results into a database, without any identifiable details such as names or addresses, to send to Statistics Jersey to create an Island-wide picture to be made publicly available.  

The sample of 500 households (roughly 1500 people) will then be tested every four weeks to help better understand the spread of coronavirus and help inform Government on how to safely ease existing lockdown measures in a careful, phased and controlled way. This testing programme will be extended further across the Island over the next few weeks.