Early intervention in Anglesey’s meat factory coronavirus outbreak may have staved off a potential catastrophe on the island, those involved in the emergency response have said.

Despite once appearing to be a very real possibility, fears of forced local lockdown have abated despite the major and much-publicised outbreak just weeks ago.

At its height last month, 221 coronavirus cases were linked to the 2 Sisters chicken processing plant in Llangefni, leading to a two week closure, with all staff asked to self isolate in the meantime.

But with Anglesey having become a pilot area for the Welsh Government’s Test, Trace and Protect (TTP) strategy – the only county in  North Wales involved – it has been claimed that such early intervention played a key role in avoiding the need for a local lockdown and subsequently very few positive cases being recorded on the island over the past week.

The strategy – which has since been rolled out across Wales –  involves extensive testing and, in the event of a positive result, tracing the people they’ve been in contact with to contain its further spread.

Welsh Government ministers and public health experts claim that effective use of this strategy will be crucial in containing the virus over the weeks and months ahead as lockdown measures are gradually eased.

But described as one of the first acid tests of the system,  it is believed that such tracing and early intervention  on Anglesey was crucial in stopping a localised outbreak from becoming a much bigger problem.

According to Public Health Wales, meanwhile, widespread support for TTP has helped bring the issue “rapidly under control,” with officers confident that cases have now reduced to “background levels.”

Dr Giri Shankar, Incident Director for the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak response at Public Health Wales, said they were hoping to draw the formal outbreak to a close in the near future.

“The news from Llangefni and the outbreak associated with the 2 Sisters meat processing plant has been consistently positive for a number of days.

“We are heartened by the positive response from the workforce and the wider communities of Anglesey and Gwynedd. Their support for the testing, contact tracing and isolation phase of our response has helped bring the outbreak rapidly under control.

“Thanks to the combined efforts of local people, the respective councils, health board and wider agencies, the testing phase of the outbreak is now completed, and cases associated and in the wider community have reduced to background levels.”

The trial, before being formally rolled out,  was run in partnership with the Welsh Government, Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board and Public Health Wales.

But while the contact tracing pilot was primarily focused on council staff, particularly those working in care settings, the much publicized outbreak at Llangefni’s 2 Sisters meat processing plant set a major challenge for all involved.

Owain Jones usually works for the authority’s leisure department as a performance manager but, along with several other members of staff, has been redeployed as part of the contact tracing process.

His role involves overseeing staff who, in-turn, contact the positive cases and then those who have been in close proximity with Covid-19 carriers.

According to Owain, being involved in the initial pilot provided invaluable experience when it came to tackling the first cases of at 2 Sisters, which saw its first positive case on June 7.

By the time the decision was made to temporarily close the plant on June 18, the number of positive cases had risen to 58, eventually surpassing the 200 mark.

But well before then, increased testing had allowed teams on the island to start contacting and warning those who had been in close proximity with positive cases, in order to stop it seeping further into the community at large.

“We were fortunate that we had a few weeks’ experience in dealing with the systems and had received the necessary training before the outbreak hit,” said Owain, a business manager who first joined the 40-strong team when the pilot started in mid May.

“It was a challenge to go from the leisure field into something completely new, but also an adventure as knew how important the work was and, by working with a strong team, could prove vital in stopping the spread.”

The team is made up of staff redeployed from other council departments which, in Owain’s case, was made possible thanks to the island’s leisure centres being closed.

“In regards to tracing people, the process kicks in when the positive test is recorded,” he said, describing the two weeks of the 2 Sisters as “challenging.”

“What can slow down the process is when people don’t answer the phone or aren’t contactable.

“For us on Anglesey the process was made much easier that people were willing to work with us and understood the importance of stopping the virus from spreading further.

“Of course there were cases where contact details and full names of everyone they’d been in contact with weren’t known, but what made the process easier was as they centred around the 2 Sisters plant, the company had such information on record.

“In many instances the workers shared lifts to and from work, so it was vital to establish who they’d been sharing vehicles with over the previous days, for instance.

“The quicker that contact is made, obviously the better it is to nip any further contact in the bud, so that first 24 hours is obviously vital.

“Obviously, now that 2 Sisters cases have been waning, our work isn’t finished, although the number of staff working on tracing at any one time is demand-led.

“The good news is that today we see there are no new recorded cases, but we’re also mindful that if another outbreak happens on the island, staff will be back on-call to meet that challenge.”

The First Minister also said  on Friday there was “no longer anxiety” about coronavirus spreading in the community, with the plant having since reopened.

Anglesey Council leader, Llinos Medi, stated the importance of Anglesey being included in the initial pilot phase, along with Bridgend, Merthyr Tydfil, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Ceredigion and Powys.

“The important thing was establishing Anglesey as a pilot area and reiterating our interest in the first place when the Welsh Government decided to go down this route,” she told the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

“It would not have happened if the staff weren’t willing to be redeployed, we could never have done it without that flexibility, which was vital, and I can’t thank them enough.

“The staff have gone way and above the call of duty over the past few weeks and little did we know, when we went into this, that a local outbreak would hit us from almost the start.

“That head start, in being in the initial pilot, undoubtedly put us in a stronger position to react when the data set off that trigger point.”

Adding the importance of working as a team with other authorities, the Welsh Government, health boards and Public Health Wales, she added: “The truth is we’ll never know how exactly how close we were to that transmission spreading into the community, and what another 24 hours of inaction would have meant.

“We do know that if we hadn’t reacted as we did then we wouldn’t be in the position that we’re in today and the figures seem to back that up.”

Meanwhile, the island’s Senedd Member paid tribute to Anglesey Council’s “visionary” approach to taking part in the early trials, but added there were lessons to be learnt going forward –  with Test, Trace and Protect likely to be with us for some time, potentially until a vaccine is developed.

Rhun ap Iorwerth, who also serves as Plaid Cymru’s health spokesman, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “There are questions in terms of shutting the factory and was that done early enough, but it was obvious that we were facing a very dangerous situation.

“There were hundreds of workers that had tested positive and somehow there was a need to identify them and communicate the need for them to isolate.

“Over the past few months I’ve heard tidbits and rumours of people not isolating when they should have been, but the fact that now two weeks on we are able to look at the data and see no spike in community transmission speaks volumes and that the messages to isolate were heard and adhered to.

“This is something we should all welcome, but there are also lessons to be learnt over what can be done better in future, including making sure that test results come back quicker.”

He added: “I’m very pleased that Anglesey Council was so visionary in its tracing programme, striking a relationship early on with Ceredigion which itself has been successful in avoiding wide transmission.

“I hope it will provide hope for local people now that such expertise has been developed on the island.

“But with 2 Sisters being such a large scale outbreak, there was no way of us dealing with the workload by ourselves and it was good to see a national framework with support being offered from other parts of Wales.

“I hope this will provide useful if and when other outbreaks occur in future.

“One mistake, in my view, was allowing workers to leave the site before being tested. If they had been tested at the workplace, either before or during closure, it would have made it much easier to capture them all rather than having to contact them individually.

“So while there are lessons there, we are able to look back with certainty that it didn’t result in wider transmission and cause a lot of pain in the process.”

On what impact testing had on its containment, he added: “The major decision that was made, albeit perhaps not as soon as I would have liked, was the call to ask all of the workers to self isolate.

“Every single member of staff had potentially been in contact with positive cases already, due to the nature of such a plant, which meant that a large portion of the tracing had already been done.

“It should be a clear indicator of the success of isolation, as it undoubtedly worked here.

“But while we avoided a local lockdown per-se, a step was taken by the local council not to open the island’s schools, so Anglesey did see more stringent measures compared to other parts of Wales.

“It was the right thing to do, but what we needed was certainty that we had an efficient enough early warning system to know if there was a wider problem and a more stringent lockdown was needed.

“We still need more clarity on this in regards to a trigger, similar to what has happened in Leicester and parts of Germany and Australia, we need to know that local lockdowns will be implemented if certain measures are hit.

“And if it does happen, these communities also need to know what support would be made available.

“You could sense how frightened people were and its timing was several weeks into lockdown and at a time when general cases were falling, but served as a wake up call too.

“The virus is still dangerous, but we’ve managed to get through this with less damage than there could have been, we are still living with Covid-19 and the way we act and behave will be a massive factor in our ability to protect ourselves.”

The island’s MP, Virginia Crosbie, added; “I saw first-hand the impact that this issue had on the wider community, in particular the fear experienced by older and vulnerable individuals who were just starting to emerge from lockdown.

“I welcomed the decision by the Council to delay opening the schools on Anglesey until we knew that the situation had been handled successfully.

“It is a recognition of the efforts by 2 Sisters, the Council, the staff of the plant and all those involved that the outbreak was contained so well.

“Without this joint working approach, Anglesey might have faced a local lockdown at a critical time for our tourist industry.

“The loss of further tourist income would have been catastrophic for the island."