Several property owners are offering apartments for free, or against a small fee, to healthcare professionals who need an alternative place to live – away from their home, where they fear contaminating their families with coronavirus.
On Monday, doctor Andrew Dimech made an appeal on Facebook saying: “A lot of my colleagues, being nurses, doctors, physiotherapists, etc, are ready to put ourselves on the frontline and do our best to minimise the collateral damage coming our way. In all the meetings we had, our major concern was isolating ourselves from our loved ones when we get back home,” he said, as he called for affordable, alternative accommodation to be made available.
One 43-year-old man who responded to this call said he owned some apartments which he rented out.
One of his tenants recently moved out so he decided to offer the apartment for free to a healthcare worker.
“I believe it’s important to start helping and taking care of each other. This is not about money. I think that good deeds snowball,” he said.
Over the past weeks, as the number of confirmed cases in Malta increased, healthcare workers have been under great pressure.
Last week, Andrei Imbroll, chairman of Valletta Boutique Living Group who is also a doctor, shared a Facebook post in which he called on healthcare workers – who need temporary accommodation to keep their family safe – to contact him.
“Since then we’ve had about 100 people come forward. We have also been contacted by people who want to put their property in the pool of property and even by someone who wants to contribute with money to support,” Imbroll told Times of Malta.
He said that in urgent cases, rooms or apartments were offered for free but, in others, this was against a fee.
“This is a nominal fee... we need to make this sustainable since we don’t know how long this will last. They can pay at any point.”
So far, the group offered some 60 rooms and units to people who had to be in quarantine away from their family or to concerned healthcare workers.
“We’ve had one nurse who is currently swabbing patients and did not want to go home to her young children and elderly parents,” Imbroll said.