Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1240944
14 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 26 APRIL 2020 NEWS Fifty days of the pandemic What ministers and health experts will be assessing in the days to come CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 "This will not be the case," a political source privy to Cabi- net talks said. "We know small retail outlets will be disap- pointed about it… ministers know summer will be a great challenge in the sweltering heat of July and August." But ministers were also told by health authorities not to use the positive statistics as a sign that they could relax the lockdown measures. "The par- tial lockdown helped so far, but lifting them could hasten the spread right before the summer," the source said. A spokesperson for the Of- fice of the Prime Minister told MaltaToday that the social distancing protocol will be re- tained for the foreseeable fu- ture. The low rate of infection al- so led to many people taking to their cars last week with a visible increment in vehicu- lar traffic and people taking strolls in the centre of towns and villages. Health authorities who spoke to MaltaToday also said that the possibility of false negatives in swabbing tests was possible, but this proba- bility was very small. "If there are other untested individu- als who are dying because of COVID-19, the terminal out- come would be pneumonia." Malta's health efforts in the COVID-19 pandemic have been lauded by the World Health Organisation. Malta has tested one in 20 of inhab- itants, while worldwide only three countries – Iceland, Far- oe Islands, and the UAE – test- ed a greater share of their pop- ulations. Only one in 10,000 of those tested have died, anoth- er great achievement. An elderly woman who died of complications from infec- tion with the COVID-19 coro- navirus was the virus's latest Maltese victim. Superintendent for Public Health Prof. Charmaine Gau- ci said the 96-year-old died at Mater Dei from complications during treatment. She had tested positive for the virus on 16 April. Just one additional positive case of COVID-19 was reg- istered in the past 24 hours, from 559 tests carried over the day. The male patient, 52, pre- sented with pain in his joints and headaches he had since 23 April. The man had been in contact with family members. Gauci announced a further 26 persons as having recov- ered from the virus, bringing the total number of recover- ies to 249. The majority of the cases did not require hospital- isation, she pointed out. There are currently 195 ac- tive cases of COVID-19 in Malta, with 448 cases so far in total. Prof. Gauci yesterday said that health advice was being given to Malta's politicians through an inter-ministerial committee, and another com- mittee set up by the Principal Permanent Secretary to deal with the crisis. In reply to questions about privacy issues from a con- tact-tracing mobile phone app, Prof. Gauci the author- ities were working with Eu- ropean partners in a manner compliant with GDPR. She had words of praise for the Central Procurement Unit for its role in securing a large cargo shipment of PPE for healthcare workers, which ar- rived in Malta yesterday. Gau- ci pointed out that the whole world was competing for lim- ited stocks of PPE. Asked about reports of prob- lems with testing kits, Gau- ci said Malta was using PCR swab tests, which detect the virus particles for diagnostic purposes. "It is the gold stand- ard of testing," she said. All the tests used by Malta were reliable, she explained, adding that at the moment an- tibody studies are needed to see the immune status of per- sons in the community. "We obtained a number of kits for this, some of which weren't found to be reliable and aren't going to be used, but oth- ers are being valida- tion-tested." On the basis of this valida- tion, the Maltese health authori- ties will see how to carry out this s e r o - p r e v a l e n c e study. COVID-19 in Malta EPIDEMIC CURVE -50 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 7-Mar 8-Mar 9-Mar 10-Mar 11-Mar 12-Mar 13-Mar 14-Mar 15-Mar 16-Mar 17-Mar 18-Mar 19-Mar 20-Mar 21-Mar 22-Mar 23-Mar 24-Mar 25-Mar 26-Mar 27-Mar 28-Mar 29-Mar 30-Mar 31-Mar 1-Apr 2-Apr 3-Apr 4-Apr 5-Apr 6-Apr 7-Apr 8-Apr 9-Apr 10-Apr 11-Apr 12-Apr 13-Apr 14-Apr 15-Apr 16-Apr 17-Apr 18-Apr 19-Apr 20-Apr 21-Apr 22-Apr 23-Apr 24-Apr 25-Apr Reported cases Imported Local transmissions Active cases Recovered Deaths 448 94 353 195 249 4 28044 Reported cases Imported Local transmissions Active cases Recovered Deaths Swabs 49: days 00: hours 07 minutes SINCE FIRST CASE IN MALTA 264 181 Gender distritbution of reported cases -5 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 0 3.5 7 10.5 14 17.5 21 24.5 28 31.5 35 3 3 4 5 7 9 13 18 21 30 38 48 53 64 73 90 107 110 129 134 129 149 151 156 169 188 195 202 213 227 241 293 299 337 350 370 378 384 393 399 412 422 426 427 431 443 444 445 447 448 Percentage increase 7-Day moving average Percentage increase 7-Day moving average Daily percentage increase Flattening the curve: Malta's reported cases start slowing down in the last two weeks, and thanks to an incredible amount of recoveries, the number of active cases is now almost the amount of those recovering Health minister Chris Fearne