Tourism Minister Julia Farrugia Portelli said that the decision to open the airport to all destinations on 15 July was a joint decision with health authorities.

Last Sunday, Prime Minister Robert Abela announced that Malta will be opening its airport and the ports to all nations on 15 July. This comes exactly two weeks after Malta’s International Airport reopens on 1 July to a number of destinations, dubbed safe corridors.

This measure to reopen the airport is one of the last precautionary Covid-19 measures to be lifted.

Certain medical experts have expressed concerns over the fact that the government is relaxing measures at such an accelerated rate.

One such criticism comes from the Malta College of Pathologists said that an exit strategy should involve phased scale-downs, spaced sufficiently apart so that if cases start to increase, there will be the possibility to identify which measure was linked to the increase and reverse it.

The Malta Independent asked Tourism Minister Farrugia Portelli for her opinion on this concern, especially seeing that the airport is set to open its doors to all destinations just two weeks after its reopen for safe corridors.

The minister said: “every decision we made was based on communications we had with health authorities. Consequently, while I understand that there might be those who raise questions in this regard, the reality is that whatever was communicated to the public was a joint decision.”

She added that there are preventative mechanisms that will allow the authorities to track down travellers, be they locals or foreigners, in cases of emergency as we have been doing for the past three years.