A total of 150 people have now recovered from coronavirus after a further 24 patients tested negative for the novel virus on Monday, the health authorities have confirmed.
Addressing her daily COVID-19 media briefing, Superintendent of Public Health Charmaine Gauci said that a third of the 443 patients who contracted the virus have now recovered.
The latest group to recover includes a patient who is over 80 years old, she said.
The figure brings the total of Malta's active cases down to 290, the lowest number since April 8 when there had been 282 people infected.
The number of people at Mater Dei Hospital’s ITU has also gone down after one of the two patients getting treatment there was discharged from the unit.
The remaining patient is still on a ventilator, Gauci said.
Health data analysts at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), have said they expect Malta’s coronavirus peak to be reached in the coming days.
According to IHME’s projections, which are worked out by analysing hospital resource use, the island will reach its peak this week, when an estimated five patients will be at the ITU.
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Since the first case of coronavirus was registered on March 7, a maximum of three people had to be treated at Mater Dei’s ICU at the same time.
While numbers have been on the low side in recent days - there was just one positive case registered on Sunday - Gauci has continued to urge people to be vigilant and to heed the health authorities’ advice.
What does COVID-19 recovery mean and how is it calculated?
Authorities follow international guidelines when declaring that a patient has recovered, Gauci said.
Patients who test positive are re-tested after a 14-day period. If that test is negative, they are tested a third time within 24 hours of the second test. Two successive negatives mean that a person is considered to have recovered.
Even then, patients who qualify as having recovered are kept in quarantine for a further week.
Patients who test positive after their initial 14-day period of care are re-tested every seven days after that until they test negative twice in 24 hours.
What if a patient reports symptoms but tests negative?
There have been cases when patients have tested negative for COVID-19 initially, but tested positive some days later.
For this reason, anyone who reports symptoms but tests negative should take all necessary precautions and keep a close eye on their symptoms, Gauci said.
”If a person notices that their symptoms have remained or increased, he or she should once again call in order to get tested once again,” she said.
She gave the example of a patient who tested negative on April 1 but reported worsening symptoms. He was tested again and the second test showed the patient had contracted coronavirus.
"This could be either because he had another virus or else the COVID-19 virus was very weak," she said.
"That is why we insist people stay home whenever they have symptoms."