Sea travel between Malta and Gozo dropped by 63.1% between April and June, with the Covid-19 pandemic taking its toll on the number of passengers making the crossing, the National Statistics Office reported on Monday.

A total of 581,311 passengers travelled between Malta and Gozo during the second quarter this year, down by 63.1% when compared to the corresponding quarter in 2019.

The highest number of passengers was recorded in June, with 318,822 or 54.8 per cent of the total for the quarter.

The month with the lowest number of passengers was in April, when 78,407 passengers made the crossing – 84.9% less than the 520,755 who made the crossing in April 2019.

When comparing to the previous year, the number of vehicles decreased by 37.9%, totalling up to 282,446 across the aforementioned period.

 The number of trips amounted to 5,334, a decrease of 15.2% over the same period in 2019. The majority of trips took place in June - 2,136 or 40% of total trips for the quarter.

Travel between Malta and Gozo had been restricted during the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic, with non-essential travel stopped for five weeks before being lifted at the beginning of May.

Travel to the sister island has seemingly started to slowly revive itself, with an increase of passengers in June when compared to previous months.

However the 318,822 passengers are still 40.3% less than the 534,433 passengers who crossed in June 2019.

It should be noted though that during June this year, the airport was still closed, meaning that the passenger movement reported by the NSO is solely domestic tourism.

The release of the figures is in line with the NSO’s news release timeline, and it comes only a week after Gozo Minister Clint Camilleri refused to release these exact same figures because he said that they were “commercially sensitive”.

Camilleri had been asked for the figures by PN MP Chris Said.