Malta’s COVID-19 death rate has once again increased significantly over a one-week period and remains the highest in the EU, according to figures from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

In the weekly round-up of COVID-19 data, the ECDC reported that Malta’s death rate stood at 50.4 deaths per one million people in the week ending July 24. In the previous weekly report, Malta’s rate had stood at 46.5 deaths per million.

The figure has been on an upward trend since June, when the number of cases in the community spiked.

Greece has the second-highest death rate at 47.3 deaths per million people.

Malta’s rate has been the highest since March when the island had also experienced an increase in community cases.

Spikes in deaths have often been detected some two weeks after increases in the number of cases in the community.

Meanwhile, the number of new cases has dwindled to below 100, in contrast to early in July when over 500 new cases were being detected daily.

The ECDC data also reflects this, with Malta’s 14-day case rate down to 684 cases per 100,000 people. The rate had been on an upward trend since mid-May and only recently started dropping.

Similarly, the positivity rate – the rate of infections from the number of tests carried out – also dropped for the first time in weeks and according to the latest data, during the week under review it stood at around 16 per cent.

The positivity and infection rates, which ECDC work out using official data supplied by the health authorities, do not include information from those testing positive using home test kits. The authorities do not collect this information.

On average, the health authorities are carrying out about 1,000 tests per day.