Six people have tested positive for the Coronavirus over the past 24 hours, but another six people have recovered, Health Superintendent Charmaine Gauci said on Sunday. 

This means that the number of active cases remains unchanged, at 58.

In total, 496 people have been infected so far, and 433 have recovered.

1,120 swabs were carried out between Saturday and Sunday. 

Gauci said one of the new patients is a 48-year-old Maltese woman who was already in quarantine since her mother had already tested positive. Symptoms started on 8 May.

The second is a Maltese man, aged 51, who started showing symptoms on 9 May. Contact tracing is being carried out with his relatives and employees.

The third is a Maltese man, 89, who is a patient at Karen Grech Hospital. He was in the same ward as the man who died this week. He had initially tested negative but was re-tested after he started showing symptoms and tested positive. He is in stable condition. Several patients and 45 staff members at the hospital were tested and they all resulted negative.

The other three cases are one cluster. These include two Mater Dei Hospital healthcare workers - two Maltese women aged 25 and 27 - and a patient, a Maltese man aged 53. The other seven patients in the ward tested negative, and so did the 14 staff members tested.

Gauci said the number of patients who require hospitalisation has remained stable.

She appealed to people to adhere to social distancing rules.

This newsroom asked Gauci whether it will be safe to use air conditioners this summer, to which she replied that it is important to clean the air conditioning units properly before switching them on, especially if they would have been off for several months.

"So far, there is no research to show that the use of air conditioning could spread the virus, since it is not an airborne virus."

When asked regarding the lifting of more measures, she said that the Health Authorities will be re-evaluating the situation after three weeks to see whether they can relax more measures. "We will only know the impact of last week's lifting of measures at the end of the week, since the incubation period is 14 days," she explained.

 

R-factor up slightly but was expected

She said that the 'R factor' has gone up slightly above one, with the six new cases detected. Regardless, the situation is still stable. With regard to the asymptomatic rate, earlier this week it was 11%, but since more people with no symptoms are being tested, the rate is now up to 13%.

"Since more testing is taking place, we expected this increase in percentage and, hopefully, the more tests are carried out, the more cases are identified."

Gauci explained that all migrants who arrived to Malta this week have been taken care of and were all tested, and each test came out negative.

Regarding the use of masks, she said that currently people should only wear masks when they are in shops, on public transport or the Gozo ferry. "Whilst there is no need to have people wearing masks constantly, we need to still follow the social distance regulations. We should not stay to close to other individuals who are not in our family circle when we are outside."