Malta’s COVID-19 reproduction number has dropped again, this time to 0.33 over the course of the last week, after the most positive week from the beginning of the pandemic to date, statistician Vincent Marmara told The Malta Independent on Sunday in his weekly exclusive video blog.

The last week saw only 2 new cases of the pandemic be found, the lowest number since the start of the virus’ spread in Malta on 7 March – now almost four months ago.

One of the two cases was imported, having arrived on a repatriation flight from the Netherlands last Wednesday.

This again compares well with the previous three weeks; last week saw only 7 new cases, while the previous weeks saw 18 and 20 new cases respectively.

Marmara explained that even when it comes to comparing the total number of new cases against the total number of tests carried out, the numbers are positive again, with only 0.04% of tests returning a positive result – again the lowest since the start of the pandemic.

This has all led to Malta’s reproduction number to fall from 0.41 last week to 0.33 this week. The week before last, it stood at 0.58.  

The reproduction number of the virus is one of the key figures which countries across the world have been trying to reduce ever since the COVID-19 pandemic began. The aim for countries has been to reduce the ratio to a level of 1 – which would mean that one person would transmit the virus to one other person.

Malta’s reproduction number has been below 1 since 20 May, now over a month ago.

Looking at other countries, Marmara said that the situation in the United Kingdom has improved, with cases declining by quite a bit when compared with their peak.

The situation in Spain and Italy meanwhile, Marmara said, is very similar with a very low number of cases when compared to their respective peaks. It is the same in Germany – their cases had declined steeply and remain, despite a small increase as of late, very low.

Away from Europe, Marmara described the situation in Brazil as ‘alarming’ with a strong increase and a high number of new daily cases.  The situation is similarly worrying in the United States, where there was a significant increase, which then start to level off and slowly decrease, but have now increased with even more vigour in recent days again.

Going back to the situation in Malta, Marmara said that the country has now entered a new phase of the pandemic wherein tourism has been reopened.

Studies therefore must factor in the importation rate of the virus, something which will naturally take a few days to understand.

However, Marmara noted, as long as the importation rate is kept low, numbers are kept under control, and the reproduction number is below 1, then there is no reason to be alarmed.