The decision by the government to organise ‘Christmas in the City’ in order to encourage people to go to Valletta is disrespectful to frontliners, the vulnerable, and the families of victims of Covid-19 among others, the Malta Environmental Health Officers Association said on Tuesday.
In a statement, the association said that the organisation of this event only days after Health Minister Chris Fearne had said that the number of positive cases of Covid-19 is expected to increase in the coming days shows that instead of pulling the same rope to control the pandemic, every entity is pulling its own rope.
The statement is in reaction to the launch of an activity called ‘Christmas in the City’ – which was launched by the government on Monday morning and which attempts to attract people to Valletta over the Christmas period.
During the launch of the event, Valletta Cultural Agency Chairman Jason Micallef said that “Covid-19 will not kill Christmas”, and Tourism Minister Julia Farrugia Portelli said that her ministry in tandem with the MTA were always looking for ways to support the capital city and businesses within it.
The event launch however comes amidst appeals by health authorities not to congregate during Christmas in order to mitigate the spread of Covid-19.
Social media was awash with discontent over the organisation of the event, and the heads of the two major medical association – the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses and the Medical Association of Malta – both blasted the idea, with Paul Pace from the former saying that it is an “absolutely crazy” idea and Martin Balzan from the latter warning that this is a similar scenario to when mass events were allowed to take place last July.
Questioned by The Malta Independent yesterday, Health Minister Chris Fearne admitted that he had yet to see the details of the event and hence could not comment on it.
The association condemned the decision to organise the event, listing five points as reasons for this.
They said that the organisation of such an activity is disrespectful to frontliners who have been working for eight months almost non-stop to fight Covid-19, to all those in obligatory quarantine, to all those who lost someone close to them due to Covid-19, to all the vulnerable and elderly who are locked into residences with limits on how many times their family can visit them, and to all the establishments which had to close recently due to the new measures to mitigate the spread of the pandemic.
“We cannot continue to take this pandemic so lightly”, the association said.
“We understand that life has to go on and that we need to learn to live with Covid-19 among us, but we think that it is premature for these types of decisions to be taken”, they said.
They noted that when they had suggested that establishments should open slowly and that mass events should not be allowed to take place, they were ignored and the whole country ended up taking an ugly hit because of the subsequent increase in cases and the effect that brought on businesses.
The association reminded that like everyone else, frontliners are humans and they would like to enjoy Christmas with their own families.
“At the moment there are 1,980 active cases, amongst whom there are a number of people in hospitals. With these decisions, we are continuing to squeeze our human resources”, the association said.
“We hope that this appeal does not fall on deaf ears and that people do not continue to be considered as numbers”, they concluded.