Latvia is advising travellers not to visit Malta following a rise in COVID-19 cases and has said that any visitors returning from there must self-quarantine for two weeks.

The Baltic country added Malta to a ‘red list’ of countries on Friday after its 14-day number of infections reached 28.4 per 100,000 people. The country is advising against travel to any country with a rate higher than 20. 

Malta has had to contend with a spike in infections over the past weeks, with the number of active cases shooting up from just three on July 17 to 150 by Friday.

More than half of those cases, 85, are of migrants who tested positive after being rescued at sea. 

The flood of new COVID-19 cases has catapulted Malta up EU coronavirus charts. Just one week ago, the country was at the bottom of the 14-day rate charts, with a figure of 1.2 per 100,000. It is now 10th, with a rate of 28.4. 

Countries with small populations, such as Malta, are penalised by such formulas as relatively small changes in the number of reported cases can have an outsized impact on their overall rate. 

Malta has now been classified as 'red' by Latvia due to its higher number of cases.

The European Centre for Disease Control has warned that “particular caution is needed when interpreting reported rates from areas with small populations” and has advised against using notification rates to directly compare countries.

Nevertheless, the increased number of COVID-19 cases registered in Malta is bound to have policymakers shifting in their seats, with the fear being that countries may introduce travel restrictions for anyone returning from Malta. 

While Latvia's blacklisting is unlikely to hurt the local hospitality sector - there are currently no direct flights between the two countries - other, more lucrative tourist markets could potentially follow suit. 

On Friday, the Irish Independent reported that Ireland was considering dropping Malta from its list of countries deemed safe for travel, citing the country’s rising 14-day rate.  

Each EU member state can set its own border restrictions as it sees fit, although guidance issued by the EU Commission in May urged member states to contribute data on case numbers to the ECDC.  

Unease about the impact rising COVID-19 figures might have on Malta was reflected in health authorities’ decision to omit infected migrants from official COVID-19 figures earlier this week. 

Sixty-six migrants who tested positive for the virus after being brought to Malta were left out of the official data and were instead only mentioned as a footnote. 

That decision has now been reversed, with Health Minister Chris Fearne saying on Thursday that the change of heart came following consultation with the ECDC. 

Malta was one of the last countries in the EU to reopen its airport but has faced criticism about a lack of restrictions on mass events

Fearne said on Thursday that events featuring more than 100 people would now only be allowed following a risk assessment. But the new restrictions have not quelled doctors’ concerns, with the Medical Association of Malta saying that the new measures are “too little, too late”.