Two new COVID-19 cases were recorded overnight, the Superintendent of public health, Charmaine Gauci,said on Thursday.

The new cases are a Sudanese man and a Romanian woman.

Gauci said 1,253 swabs were made overnight. The two new cases raised the total number of cases to 465 with a total of 32,989 swabs.

Twelve patients recovered in the past 24 hours leaving 110 active cases.

About the new cases, she said the Sudanese man, 33 lives in the community. He was in contact with a previous case but had been in quarantine since and so was not in contact with anyone else.

The Romanian woman, 29, stopped working and had symptoms on April 27
She had two household contacts.

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Gauci observed that the number of cases is now stable, as was expected.
The R0 (transmission rate) was also stable and the authorities were achieving their aim to keep the number of cases low.

She said that a number of the cases in recent days, had no symptoms but overall, 80 per cent of cases had symptoms.

When one removed the migrants from Hal Far from the cohort of patients without symptoms, 11 per cent of patients were asymptomatic.

She said the majority of active cases are at home though they are still being monitored.

Three patients are in Mater Dei hospital, with two of them in ITU. Eight are at Boffa Hospital and six at  St Thomas Hospital.

Giving details on the patients who recovered overnight, Gauci said two were between 20-29 years old, three between 30-39, five between 50-59, one between 70-79 and another one over 90 years old.

Symptoms app respects privacy

Gauci also urged everyone to use the new symptoms app, announced on Thursday morning.

She stressed that nobody would be submitting any personal details. All that was required was a person's age.

The person's IP address or location will also not recorded.

The app information, she said, gives an indication of the symptoms in the community in order to step up surveillance.

On the introduction of a contact tracing app, she explained that this is  something which is different to what was launched on Thursday. Work on this second app is ongoing.

"We are monitoring what the EU is saying and we are also in contact with other countries and we are working together as a consortium to develop the app."

Patient in intensive care

On a new patient at the ITU, Gauci said the man is an elderly patient. He was already in hospital and the doctors felt he should be monitored at the ITU since he could thus be monitored more closely. She said that as there were beds available at the unit, doctors could move patients around more easily to ensure they received the best possible care.

Gauci gave no information on the transition strategy and the lifting of measures, saying this was being worked on and details would be announced in due time. 

Recovery testing

On recovery testing, Gauci said that initially patients were tested twice. Malta now followed ECDC (European Centre for Disease Control) guidelines issued some weeks ago that stated that one could test once after 14 days.

Asked about the possible resumption of Premier League football, Gauci said that the lifting of measures needed to be based on evidence.

"We cannot say anything on that right now and we will take decisions step by step."

On treatment such as Remdesivir, Gauci said that few patients actually needed treatment. There were cases when doctors used combination therapy, but she did not give details.

Replying to other questions, Gauci said it was not illegal to go to a weekend break in a farmhouse, but one had to make sure to only stay with people from the same household.

On Gozo, Gauci said that although there are currently no active cases there, a number of people are still under quarantine