The efforts of the health sector and the education sector to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic have been crushed by the Labour Party’s poor governance, the Nationalist Party said today.

Spokesperson for Health Stephen Spiteri and Spokesperson for Education and Sport Clyde Puli spoke regarding the record-breaking spike in Covid cases reported in Malta today and said that the PN is incredibly dissatisfied with the Labour Party’s handling of the pandemic in Malta.

Spiteri quoted Prime Minister Robert Abela, who said, regarding the pandemic, that “By March we would have recovered”. Spiteri said this is far from the case as the Medical Association of Malta (MAM) said Malta is inundated with active Covid cases.

“If we do not do something soon, we will face a crisis and collapse in the health sector”, Spiteri said.

He urged for more initiatives to be taken by the PL to ensure that Malta has a strong contact tracing system. Spiteri said this is a “fundamental” step in the reduction of cases, as strong contact tracing would increase the awareness of individuals to follow the necessary measures to reduce the spread.

He also said, in line with the European Centre of Disease Control, there is no need for one to take a test once one has quarantined for two weeks, however it is crucial that the two-week period is not breached as this will contribute to the growing number of cases.

Puli focused on how the spike in cases today will affect the education sector. Although schools are taking all the necessary precautions to warrant a rise in cases, the PL’s poor governance has had an effect on teaching and has forced both students and teachers to go into quarantine for long periods of time.

Puli criticised the government for ever-rising number of Covid cases. “First we were a few tens of people, and then that became normal. Other times there were 100 and that became normal. Last Christmas, we went up to 200 every day and that become normal. And today we are at 336 cases and I hope that we won’t soon be able to say that that is normal”, he said.

He called for the government to adopt “a scientific approach” to the handling of the pandemic, as well as an approach that also “keeps the interest of the students in mind”.

This approach, he continued, would involve careful planning when it comes to vaccinating educators, in order that they are sent in groups to receive their vaccinations, rather than be sent in bulk and risk being exposed to excessive queues at hospitals.

When asked questions by the press, Spiteri said that he does not have the authority to say that another lockdown should be put into place, but rather he invoked that more attention needs to be given to the measures that are currently in place to ensure that they are not breached by the general public.