Addressing Parliament this evening, Deputy Prime Minister Chris Fearne spoke about the recent spike in Covid-19 cases and highlighted that the recent spike could be due to the Covid-19 variants present on the island.

Fearne said that the record amount of cases yesterday cannot be taken out of context. "It is no secret that the moving average over the past week has increased compared to a couple of weeks ago when the daily average was that of 130 to 140 cases per day."

The reasons for the recent spike could be many, but the biggest factors which the health authorities are looking at are pandemic fatigue, where people are becoming more lenient in terms of the measures they are supposed to follow, and the delay of the variant wave.

Unlike other countries, Malta seems to have prolonged the arrival of Covid-19 variants in the community Fearne said, "but the inevitable situation of a variant which is more easily transmitted could be the main reason for the recent spike in cases."

"Our main objective is to attack the virus. This could only be done through a successful vaccination process like ours", Fearne said. He continued to explain that apart from attacking the virus "we must also defend against it and this could only be done by enforcing the current measures and where possible increasing the fines that are tied to breaking the mitigation measures."

Fearne said that the implementation of new measures is a possibility in the near future.

Fearne also confirmed that although previously the Astra Zeneca vaccine was only going to be administered to 17 to 55 year olds, new studies conducted in Scotland show that there were no medical problems when the Astra Zeneca vaccine was given to people in an older age group.

Therefore as of next week, the Astra Zeneca vaccine would start being administered to people in the 60 to 65 age group.

Regarding the contact tracing team, when responding to a statement by Opposition Leader Bernard Grech about the time taken to notify someone about his/her positive result, Fearne said that because of the rise in cases, unlike in the previous weeks, the contact tracing team has fallen slightly behind in informing people about their result and performing the contact tracing analysis.

Fearne said that a couple of weeks ago the time taken to inform was less than a day, while now it is 2 to 3 days, and because of this more resources are being given to the contact tracing team in the hopes of reducing this wait period.

New vaccination centres in Paula, Boffa and Gozo are set to open in the coming days and as of tomorrow, people aged between 75 and 80 will start to receive their vaccination appointments.

In a closing statement, Fearne addressed statements made about people close to him who were given priority for vaccination. Fearne denied these allegations and said that it is not in his power to hand out such favours. He also stated that there was a Nationalist Member of Parliament who asked to be pushed up the vaccination line.