The health and catering sectors are being stretched to the limit because many members of staff are out on mandatory quarantine or self-isolation, according to their representatives. 

Human resources at Mater Dei Hospital are in a dire state, with close to 100 nurses out on quarantine, according to the head of the Malta Union of Nurses and Midwives, Paul Pace.

Contacted about the situation before Health Minister Chris Fearne announced changes to quarantine periods, Pace said the absence of these nurses came on top of the fact that there had already been an acute shortage of nurses and the fact that beds were fast filling up due to COVID.

The changes announced on Wednesday apply only to those who have received a third dose of the COVID vaccine and are not showing any symptoms.

Hospital staff are only obliged to stay in quarantine for seven days. “But even with this measure, we are not coping with the number of patients coming in,” Pace said. 

He said the situation at Gozo Hospital was even worse, with management having to postpone elective surgeries due to the nurse shortage. 

“We’ve lost count of the number of nurses there are in quarantine. With such a large number of COVID cases, that number is bound to increase,” he said. 

'Catering establishments hamstrung by worker shortages'

The situation is similar in the hospitality sector.

Tony Zahra, the veteran president of the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association, said catering establishments were hamstrung by worker shortages and the situation was getting worse as time passed.  

While the impact had been mild until a few weeks ago, the number of restaurant employees out on quarantine, from kitchen hands to front-of-house staff, was now leaving a severely negative toll on operations, he said. 

The best-case scenario would be if the soaring number of COVID cases reached a plateau and started to dip, he added.

There have been calls to revise the rules as the country experiences a massive spike in virus infections, with thousands of workers now in quarantine and concerns raised about the impact on several economic sectors.

The Malta Chamber joined those calls, saying the current 14-day requirement was “unsustainable” for the local economy.

It said the government should cut isolation periods to 10 days and require fully vaccinated contacts of people who test positive for COVID-19 to quarantine for only seven days – half the current requirement.

The chamber’s position reflects advice from the Malta Association of Public Health Medicine, which said on Tuesday that quarantine rules could be reconfigured in light of the latest evidence.

It is advising a 10-day quarantine period for COVID-19 positive cases and their household members, and a seven-day period for high-risk contacts.

In its statement on Wednesday, the chamber said that adapting quarantine would encourage people to comply with the rules, at a time when contact tracing and enforcement “are stretched to the limit”.

“As things stand, there is a real risk that businesses providing essential services will be unable to operate uninterruptedly. Companies that cannot shift to remote working, such as manufacturing, will run into serious disruptions that will further compromise supply chains.  Supermarkets, essential retail and the tourism sector will also be adversely affected,” the Chamber said.

'Space at MDH running out'

Meanwhile, the head of the doctors’ union, Martin Balzan warned that space was running out at Mater Dei and elderly patients had been transferred to Sir Paul Boffa hospital to free up space.  

“The numbers are on the increase and it seems deaths will increase too. There will come a time when Mater Dei will not be able to cope and that is where we would need a lockdown like Holland and other countries did… If the numbers remain so high, we will need more restrictions in a few days,” he told Newsbook in an interview. 

Balzan said people needed to be responsible by taking the booster, wearing their masks, practising social distance and staying home when possible.