Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1345126
5 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 28 FEBRUARY 2021 NEWS COVID-19: footballer in court over fake test ruse 237 new cases of COVID-19 were registered on Saturday. This brings the total number of cases to 22,219. There are cur- rently 2,651 active COVID-19 cases. 76,159 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered until Tuesday, of which 25,118 were second doses. Total recoveries stand at 19,255. No deaths were reg- istered. The total number of deaths stands at 313. 3,578 swab tests were carried out in the last 24 hours, bring- ing the total number of swabs to 695,192. Fake test A Brazilian football player admitted to using a fake COV- ID-19 test result to leave Malta. Carlos Vilmar Da Silva Rodri- gues was accused in court of making a false declaration to a public authority and forgery of documents. The accused, a footballer who said he came to Malta to play for Senglea Athletic, tried to leave the islands after finding out that the club had no money to pay him. Defence lawyer Charmaine Cherrett said Rodrigues submit- ted to a COVID-19 test on 23 February, but after waiting three days for his test result to be de- livered, decided to use a fake test to leave the islands. Rodrigues pleaded guilty to the charges and was handed a sen- tence of one year in prison, sus- pended for four. Inspector Silvio Magro prosecuted. President hosts 'unity' conference PRESIDENT George Vella yesterday launched an unprec- edented conference on "na- tional unity" in Malta, as the former Labour foreign minis- ter made a plea for a construc- tive dialogue on the lack of harmony in Malta's social and political relations. Vella admitted he was per- sonally perturbed by the "state of disunity" in Malta, and that the conference had been on his mind throughout the last years of his erstwhile government career. "The reactions to the proposal in the last weeks were varied: there were reactions of cynicism, others suspected some government self-inter- est, others truly welcomed the opportunity… some early con- tributions were truly detailed and interesting," Vella said. Vella said the divisions in the country appeared to be wide, but that nothing stopped people from addressing these problems. "I have said my piece clearly enough on why this conference is need… but if we could just at least agree on what those issues are that are dividing us by the end of this conference, it would already be a big enough step. Then we can at least agree to do our best to address the situation." Vella posed some rhetori- cal questions to his audience, both at Verdala Palace and following live on Facebook: "Is Malta only for the Maltese or is it for all those who live here? What about the distribution of our economic growth, does it spread fairly to everyone? Are we really safeguarding the en- vironment as our collective responsibility? And lastly, but not least, has our print and digital media been weaponised for the humiliation of others?" Vella complained at the lev- el of intolerance and incivil- ity on social media displayed between people who disagree with each other. "Everyone has suddenly become 'corrupt', nobody is above suspicion, it's as if nobody can be seen to be competent anymore… and this is simply far from the truth." Vella admitted he was not ex- pecting 'miracles' from the fo- rum. "I just hope that we learn a lot from this exercise. The first step is the hardest."