Nurses will be brought to Malta from India to help fight the COVID-19 spread, the health authorities have confirmed.

The nurses’ union had been told that up to 300 nurses were landing in Malta on March 30, however the recruitment process seems to have been delayed because of a national lockdown ordered in India as part of coronavirus mitigation measures.

A health ministry spokesperson told Times of Malta on Wednesday that efforts were under way to recruit nurses from India. The nurses will spend their first 14 days in Malta in quarantine and receive the necessary COVID-19 training during that time. 

“Other recruitment efforts may be undertaken should this be considered necessary,” she added.

'Shortage of protective gear'

On Wednesday, general secretary Colin Galea said the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses was concerned about an impending shortage of personal protective equipment. 

“Nurses from Mount Carmel Hospital and the Renal Unit told us that their management is struggling to replace stocks of PPEs which will seemingly last until the end of the week,” he told Times of Malta. 

Galea said the nurses who had asked for PPEs were those tasked with swabbing suspect cases. If they did not wear protective gear and the patient tested positive for coronavirus, the health carers would need to go into quarantine, further depleting the staff complement, he added. 

MUMN was still waiting for 360-degree coveralls, which should have arrived 10 days ago, Galea said, adding that directives allowing nurses to refuse to care for patients if they did not have such PPEs were still in place.

The union is meanwhile insisting that in the case of couples who are both healthcare workers, at least one member should not be assigned duties related to COVID-19 patients. 

That would ensure that any children they have will have a parent to look after them, should the other parent be infected.