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2 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 30 AUGUST 2020 NEWS Cases 1847 Active 592 Recoveries 1244 Deaths 11 Swabs 186,444 LATEST COVID-19 www.maltatoday.com.mt/covid19 MATTHEW VELLA ONE of the world's greatest voices is belting out Giacomo Puccini's Nessun Dorma before 6,000 people at the Royal Albert Hall in London. It's 2012, and Joseph Calleja, decked out in a Team GB tracksuit ahead of the Olympics, peels off the top to reveal a black t-shirt embla- zoned with the symbol of the once-debauched aristocracy that ruled over Malta before its colonisation by the British. Next up, Calleja is singing Rule, Brittania! to middle Eng- land as he crowns the Last Night Of The Proms. Forget the prob- lematic eight-pointed cross (suggestion: face one-time slav- er Empire with the four victims of the Sette Giugno uprising). The question is: will Calleja ever sing again the rousing finale to the Proms as the BBC plans to drop Rule, Brittania! and Land of Hope and Glory? The Last Night of the Proms takes place on 12 September without its flag-waving audience due to COVID-19. But conduc- tor Dalia Stasevska believes it is time "to bring change" in the year of the anti-racism move- ment that gathered pace follow- ing the death of George Floyd, due to the song's associations with colonialism and slavery. Rule, Britannia!, set to mu- sic by Thomas Arne in 1740, is based on a poem by James Thomson, which contains the verses: "The nations, not so blest as thee / Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall. While thou shalt flourish great and free / The dread and envy of them all. Rule, Britannia! rule the waves / Britons never will be slaves." The decision has divided sup- porters and critics alike in the UK: the songs are deemed of- fensive to groups champion- ing ethnic diversity in music. "These songs are jingoistic ech- oes of empire and, depending on what side of the fence you're sitting on, you either feel joyous, emboldened and patriotic and immediately identify with all the sentiments of it," said Chi-chi Nwanoku of the Chineke! Foun- dation to the BBC. The solution by the BBC will be an orchestral version of the songs, without any singing ac- companying it. Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he is opposed to the BBC's decision. "I think it's time we stopped our cringing embar- rassment about our history," he told reporters. But what does the great Mal- tese tenor himself, Joseph Calle- ja, have to say about this devel- opment? "I understand both sides of the argument. I totally understand Boris Johnson's reaction, but I can also understand that peo- ple are offended by the conno- tations this hymn brings with it," Calleja, who has appeared in six Proms - starting in 2008, and last singing in 2018 at Hyde Park. "I don't like being a fence-strad- dler, I do understand both sides. But ultimately where do we draw the line? When is enough is enough? Shall we erase every- one's history, or use these 'things' to educate and condemn what happened so that it will never happen. That's my take." The Proms, more formal- ly known as the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical mu- sic concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in central London. The Proms were found- ed in 1895, and are now organised and broadcast by the BBC. Brooding Brittania The words to Rule, Brittania! that Joseph Calleja once sang at the Proms will be dropped this year. Should 'we' even oblige a former coloniser with songs that exalt Empire? Boris Johnson: British PM disapproves. Double-bassist Chi-chi Nwanoku: "These songs are jingoistic echoes of empire" Calleja at the Proms in 2012: "I understand both sides of the argument" "Shall we erase everyone's history, or use these 'things' to educate and condemn what happened so that it will never happen" Joseph Calleja Malta has 330,000 doses of prospective COVID-19 vaccine MATTHEW AGIUS DEPUTY Prime Minister Chris Fearne has announced that Malta has been allocated 330,000 doses of a potential vaccine for COVID-19. In a tweet on Saturday morn- ing, health minister Fearne said that this would mean that Malta would be amongst the first nations to protect all its vulnerable and frontliners. This would be followed by a vaccine for the entire popula- tion, later, he said. Scientists and researchers have been scrambling to de- velop an effective and safe COVID-19 vaccine since the pandemic began in China in December 2019. Vaccines mimic the virus they protect against, stimu- lating the immune system to develop antibodies. They must follow higher safety standards than other drugs because they are given to millions of healthy people and so require long pe- riods of safety testing. Vaccine development for new infec- tious diseases can take as long as 5 to 10 years, but efforts are being made to accelerate development of a vaccine for COVID-19. The health authorities are aiming to acquire 200,000 flu vaccine shots come October in an attempt to double last sea- son's reach. The move is in line with government's intention to try and decrease the pres- sure on health resources from the seasonal flu at a time when many fear a second wave of COVID-19 infections. The intention is to double the number of vaccinated in- dividuals this year. In the last flu season, the health authori- ties had acquired 100,000 vac- cines and distributed just over 90,000 for free by January. "We will be insisting that more peo- ple take the seasonal influenza vaccine come October," Fearne said back in June. The seasonal influenza sea- son occurs between October and May, with the peak nor- mally reached by the end of January. Last January, Public Health Superintendent Charmaine Gauci said the community rate for influenza was of 10 per- sons from every 100 who vis- ited their family doctor. In the previous season, the rate had topped 16 out of every 100. Influenza typically affects about 20% of the population. Influenza viruses are constant- ly changing. Therefore, the vaccines are updated upon rec- ommendations of the World Health Organisation. Government normally offers the vaccine for free to the el- derly, people with chronic con- ditions and children under five years of age in the first phase, widening the net to everybody else in subsequent phases. The authorities are also eval- uating the possibility of mak- ing the vaccine mandatory for certain groups of individuals. Vaccines mimic the virus they protect against, stimulating the immune system to develop antibodies. They must follow higher safety standards than other drugs because they are given to millions of healthy people and so require long periods of safety testing