The island entered a third lockdown at midnight.

A new 21-day circuit breaker was announced at 10am yesterday by Chief Minister Howard Quayle.

He said: ’We need to intervene now, we need to eliminate this outbreak. We need you to stay at home. There are only a few exceptions to this - for essential things like getting food, daily exercise. Everyone who can work from home must do so.’

Household mixing has to stop, wearing of masks in public is advised and compulsory of public transport, and social distancing is being brought back in.

All hospitality and leisure venues, lifestyle businesses and non-essential retail must close.

Schools will close from today for the majority of children.

Construction and related trades, however, can continue so long as they are outside or working on vacant properties.

Mr Quayle said Ministers had lengthy discussions ’which weighed heavily on our minds.’

The move follows identification of further cases whose source is not known.

Public health director Dr Henrietta said the new cases showed considerable spread in terms of geography and demographics of the individuals involved.

’There is a much wider community spread issue out there now which we need to respond to,’ she said.

Two unexplained cases were first confirmed at the weekend but the government held back on introducing a lockdown at that point.

Then on Sunday evening and into Monday another two separate cases emerged with contact tracing indicating they may have been linked.

And then on Monday evening a further two cases were identified where the source is not known, one of these in a school setting - Bemahague.

Year 8 students at Bemahague and everyone they live with were told to stay at home today and wait to be contacted by 111.

Council of Ministers immediately held an emergency meeting in response to receiving confirmation of this.

Mr Quayle said: ’There is of course still a great deal that we don’t know. But what is also clear is that, as we said on Sunday there is transmission in our community that we cannot see and that we do not understand.

’We can now see this is not an isolated couple of cases but more widespread.

’We tried so hard to wait, to have more information and ensure our response was proportionate. Late last night, we decided that we do now need to act.’

With schools closed online learning will restart.

Schools, in their existing settings, will only be open to children of essential workers and to vulnerable children.

From Wednesday financial support measures including MERA, Salary Support and the Business Support Scheme will be reactivated.

Mr Quayle said: ’I know this will be far from easy this time for so many.

’I know there is a great cost in locking down our island and your lives. And I am truly sorry that this is happening.’

Dr Ewart said that until Friday the steadily increasing number of cases were all linked to high risk contacts of a single cluster.

Then two cases emerged on Friday evening that could not be linked but their wider contacts were limited so there was lower level of concern about onward transmission.

On Sunday a third community case was detected that was not linked to the other two or the cluster. A close contact of this was identified on Monday with evidence that might link it back to the cluster.

Dr Ewart said it was not until Monday night and the emergence to two completely unrelated cases that the ’level of concern and level of risk definitively rose’.

She said the timing of the latest two cases made it likely that they were linked to the cluster but we may never know the missing links through which transmission occurred.

’There is a much wider community spread issue out there now which we need to respond to,’ she said.