Malta’s leading business lobby wants business owners to have the right to ask workers to prove that they have been vaccinated. 

Without that right, employers will be forced to manage workers’ quarantine “blindly” after a recent change in rules, the Malta Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry said on Saturday.

Authorities announced this week that they will no longer be sending out quarantine release letters, signalling that a person is now free to exit their home and return to daily life. Instead, people ordered into quarantine will be expected to calculate their quarantine period themselves. 

The government has created a form to help people calculate how long they must quarantine for. 

Quarantine periods, which were previously fixed at 14 days for positive COVID-19 cases and their household members, will now also depend on vaccination status, with isolation periods cut to 10 days for those who have received booster vaccine doses. 

Business owners say that this leaves them with no way of knowing when a quarantined worker should return to their workplace, as quarantine periods depends on the vaccination status of workers and their household members. 

In its statement, the Malta Chamber said that while it feels it would be unethical to request details about the health or vaccination status of household members of employees, employers should have the right to ask workers about their vaccination status. 

“The Chamber has long been calling for employers to have the right to request information about the vaccination status of the employees. For the employer this is relevant information in a broader health and safety context,” it said, warning that without such a right, “it will be impossible for employers to contain abuse.” 

It further called on the authorities to continue revising quarantine rules in line with what other countries are doing, “particularly given the high rate of uptake of the booster.”