Health superintendent Charmaine Gauci said two new Coronavirus cases were registered today, while six have recovered.

This brings the total number of cases registered in Malta to 486, with five deaths.

In all, 413 patients have recovered, while leaves 68 active cases.

In the past day, Gauci said that 1,022 swab tests were carried out, bringing the total to 39,366.

The two cases reported today are two women, one aged 77 and the other 24.

Gauci said the elderly woman tested positive when she went to Mater Dei Hospital for an unrelated appointment.

The younger woman accompanied her daughter to a test after the girl experienced symptoms.

The girl tested negative but her mother tested positive.

Gauci said that only 3.7 per cent of Malta's cases involved children, indicating that children are - as is happening abroad - less affected by the virus. However, she stressed, it is still possible for children to transmit the virus.

Of the six who recovered, Gauci said two are aged between 10 and 19, one in the 20s, one in the 30s and two in the 40s.

Asked by The Malta Independent whether, given the fact that a number of cases being found are asymptomatic, there are plans to carry out testing on those who work at factories – especially major factories – so to ensure that there aren’t any asymptomatic carriers of the virus, Gauci said that as part of their enhanced testing programme they had approached major factories to offer to test their employees.

She said that as part of this programme they had chosen people who are on the frontline and are more likely to come into contact with the virus for testing, but had also offered testing to a number of factories and entities which employ a lot of people.  She said that a lot of these factories had taken up the offer and that it is important for testing to continue to things are kept under control.

She noted that social distancing remains the utmost priority and that this should be observed in factories and other places of work such as, for instance, through perspex partitions.

Also asked by this newsroom what those people who are classified as vulnerable but cannot work from home should do to avoid losing their jobs, Gauci said that people can apply for an exemption from isolation at which point a risk assessment process centering on their place of work and their risk of facing transmission of the virus will take place.

For those who cannot work, she said, there are other things that may apply, such as the government’s financial aid packages.

Asked about the detection of the virus in CT scans but not in swab tests, Gauci noted that there are rare cases where a person undergoing a CT scan may be found to have an infection in the lungs or certain peak changes which indicate that there may have been Covid-19 present in the system.

Those people are tested, and if they test negative through the swab test they are regarded as “probable” cases.  Even though they are not counted in the total tally of cases, Gauci said, the necessary public health measures are still taken regardless.

Answering other questions, Gauci confirmed that those people such as cancer patients who may require treatment abroad are being assessed and their travel abroad for treatment is still being arranged in spite of the airport’s ongoing closure.

Asked whether elite individual athletes can return to training, Gauci said that there is nothing wrong if they train outside but noted that they must avoid being close to other people like everyone else.

 

Asked whether restaurants would be opened soon, Gauci said that assessment of the measures which have been relaxed will continue over the next two weeks before a decision on further measures is taken.