Doctors and professional health workers are calling for additional measures to be introduced in the fight against the coronavirus.

In a statement on Friday, the Medical Association of Malta and the Association of Public Health Medicine said they were seriously concerned about the current situation and have written confidentially to the superintendent of public health requesting additional measures to bring numbers down.

They noted that, at 46 cases per day, Malta now had the second-highest rate of new cases on a 14-day average in the entire EU.

As a result, at least 16 EU countries have introduced travel restrictions to and from Malta, and arrivals have decreased significantly, with serious and long term sustained economic consequences on the tourism sector.

Measures had to be taken to bring this number to under 10 a day as soon as possible.  

Although health care services were coping, the spread among the vulnerable was increasing, they said.

They pointed out that, as numbers increased among vulnerable patients, the risk of avoidable deaths also increased. Furthermore, 10% of patients admitted to Mater Dei may need many months to recover their normal health status. Every effort should be made to keep numbers manageable by the health services.

Should Malta manage to decrease the number of new cases back to June levels, this would reap both public health and economic benefits. 

Country needs to bring numbers down rapidly

Malta needed to bring the numbers down rapidly to reopen its ports and support the tourism sector, but it also had to regain the confidence of foreign governments to reverse travel restrictions. The country could only promote itself as a safe island for tourists once it is indeed safe by epidemiological standards.

Further restrictive measures are necessary, they said, and these should be decided upon by the superintendent of public health. Wherever they are introduced, financial compensation to businesses and support of affected employees must be continued. 

All Malta arrivals, they said, should carry a negative swab result which had to be taken 72 hours prior to departure from all countries, including Maltese nationals returning from abroad, until a vaccine is found.

Anyone who still enters Malta without a valid test should be swabbed on arrival at their own cost, and only allowed to enter Malta once the test is performed. Random testing of a few incoming passengers from "amber" regions has already uncovered three positive cases.

This was a high rate and there could be many more who were missed since testing was random. Increasing the testing capacity was essential and imported cases had to be reduced to zero.

They also called for the expiry date for vouchers to be extended until the end of December. They had been given to kickstart the economy however, by encouraging people to move out of their homes, they were instead kickstarting the epidemic rendering them counterproductive to the economy.