Malta has broken through another record number of daily COVID-19 cases, reporting 362 new cases on Thursday.

A further four deaths were reported at Mater Dei: two women aged 68 and 76 and two men, aged 75 and 64. 

There are now 3,128 active cases after 230 people recovered, according to the latest health ministry update.

The record daily case numbers came from a high number of tests, with 4,146 people being swabbed for the virus.

It is the fourth time in a week that daily case numbers have reached all-time highs with the highly-transmissible UK variant being held responsible for the surge. 

Malta currently ranks fourth in the EU in terms of the number of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people. However, when it comes to the number of deaths, it fares much better, ranking 20th.

On Friday, Prime Minister Robert Abela finally announced new measures amid a clamour from medical experts for something to be done to curb the rate of infection.

Meanwhile, the number of people to receive at least one dose of the vaccine reached 86,854 - around 17 per cent of the population. Of these, 30,329 people have been given a second dose. 

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.