Three people have died while positive for Covid-19, public data seen by The Malta Independent shows, even as the usual daily update on the state of the pandemic in Malta is yet to be published.

The daily update is normally published at around 12:30pm - but by 1:45pm no such update had been forthcoming.

However, data shared through an official open dataset on Covid-19 which is administered by Malta’s Covid-19 response team does show today’s numbers.

Health authorities reported 360 new cases of the virus, and three deaths – although the details on those who died are not part of the dataset.

With 134 new recoveries reported in the dataset, the number of active cases is now up to 4,276.

1,255,418 doses of the vaccine have been administered thus far, with 349,906 of those being booster doses.

Malta has had 77,459 cases of the virus.  72,153 of those have recovered, while 634 have died.

One can speculate that the reason for the data not being published is that it used to be published on the Health Ministry's Facebook page - however, given that this is now a new legislature, there is technically no Health Ministry formed at the moment.  This will remain the case until Robert Abela - sworn in as Prime Minister this morning - forms his Cabinet.