The Covid-19 r-factor has remained unchanged from last week and still stands at 0.9, statistician Vince Marmara said on this week’s video blog for The Malta Independent on Sunday.

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.

Marmara said the number of new cases has remained similar to previous weeks.

The percentage of positive results from the tests carried out increased slightly, from 5% last week to 5.3% this week. There were 13 deaths over the past seven days, with the numbers being similar to past weeks.

This week there were slightly more new cases than recoveries.

Around 4% of the population has now received both doses of the vaccine and 8% received at least one dose.

Marmara noted that the number of new cases decreased in the UK, and remained stable in Spain, France, Italy and Germany.

“This pandemic is always teaching us new things. We must study, for example, the new variants found, to see what their effect on the community will be.”

Marmara said that, as usual, we need to remain vigilant and do our part to stop the spread.