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12.03.2020 2 NEWS MASSIMO COSTA | AND KARL AZZOPARDI THE Prime Minister has announced that all air and sea travel to and from France, Germany, Switzerland and Spain will be stopped from midnight tonight. Anyone who returned from any of the four countries today will also have to observe a mandatory 14-day quar- antine, which will be enforced by fines, Robert Abela said this afternoon. e travel restrictions are an extension of the ban already in place on travel to and from Italy. Anyone who returned from Italy in the past 14 days must also observe an obligatory 14-day quaran- tine period. e new measures are being taken in light of the transmission rate in France, Germany, Switzerland and Spain, which has in the past hours increased expo- nentially, he said. Police will be carrying out regular spot-checks to ensure the mandato- ry quarantine is being observed, and €1,000 fines will be handed out for each day when a breach is found. Maltese people returning from abroad are to stay at home during the quaran- tine period, while any tourists who have come to Malta from the five countries must spend their quarantine in their hotel room. e government will be offering a ser- vice to people in quarantine to deliver to them food and other necessities. Maltese residents in France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Italy will be re- patriated to Malta. Commercial transport of medicines, foods and merchandise between Malta and the mentioned countries will con- tinue, the Prime Minister said. Abela also appealed to the elderly to not leave home if they didn't need to and urged people to avoid travelling abroad unless necessary. Asked whether schools and universi- ties might be closed in the future, Abela said this was not being excluded. "If we have such a directive from the public health authorities, we will do so imme- diately," he said. 'The most uncomfortable time of our lives' Abela said that the current situation might be "the most uncomfortable pe- riod in our lives". e measures, he said, were necessary to preserve human life. e Prime Minister underlined that no breaches of the mandatory quaran- tine will be tolerated, and that should people not observe it, stricter measures will be taken to ensure public health is safeguarded. "If the people cooperate and shoul- der their responsibility, we will be able to emerge from these circumstances quicker," he said. Health Minister Chris Fearne also said that while all six known local corona- virus cases were imported to Malta, if a case of sustained transmission in the community is detected, more drastic measures will be announced. e measures add to those the Prime Minister announced on Tuesday, which restricted mass events in light of the spread of Covid-19. Mass outdoor events with more than 2,000 people were banned, and indoor events could only be held with a max- imum of 750 attendees, Abela said yes- terday. To date, six people have tested positive for the virus in Malta. All have been re- ported to be in a good condition. e sixth case, reported Wednesday morning, involves a Maltese doctor who was on holiday in north Italy and returned to Malta on 8 March. Covid-19 travel ban now applies to France, Germany, Switzerland and Spain as well as Italy • Mandatory quarantine with police spot-checks introduced Coronavirus Mandatory quarantine introduced against €1,000 fine, travel ban extended THE coronavirus outbreak has now been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO) - as it expresses increasing alarm about the rising number of cases. More than 4,300 people have died globally after contracting COVID-19, the prevalent strain of coronavirus, and there have been a total of over 121,500 confirmed infections in at least 114 nations. ere have been more than 3,000 deaths in China, the epicentre of the outbreak. In the second worst affected country Italy, which has been put on lockdown, the number of dead in the most severely hit region of Lombardy has reportedly risen from 468 to 617 in a day. Speaking about the worldwide situation, WHO Director Gener- al Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: "We are deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction. "We have therefore made the as- sessment that COVID-19 can be characterised as a pandemic." He added: "In the past two weeks, the number of cases of COVID-19 outside China has increased 13 fold and the number of affected countries has tripled." Tedros said all countries can still change the course of the pandem- ic if they detect, test, treat, isolate, trace and mobilise their people in the response. According to the WHO web- site, a pandemic is defined as the worldwide spread of a new disease. It can also refer to a disease which is prevalent over a whole country. In contrast to a pandemic, an epidemic refers to the spread of illness in a "community or region... clearly in excess of normal expec- tancy". COVID-19 outbreak declared pandemic by World Health Organisation

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