There is no guarantee that a second COVID-19 wave will not take place, The Malta College of Pathologists warned on Tuesday.
In a statement, it raised concern at what Prime Minister Robert Abela said on M Monday, that fears about a spike in cases of COVID-19 cases or a second wave have been proven unfounded.
Speaking during a news conference to announce the easing of restrictive measures, Prime Minister Robert Abela said on Monday that the second wave or the spike have not materialised and the numbers from the medical aspect have continued to go down.
The college said it felt such statements at this stage were premature. They risked undermining the massively successful national efforts which reduced the impact of COVID-19 in Malta, primarily through social distancing and widespread availability and encouragement of testing at the slightest hint of illness.
The most likely effect of such pronunciations by prominent politicians would be to elicit a false sense of security and weaken the resolve of the public to persist with these efforts.
The college said it could not emphasise enough that Malta had no guarantee that a second wave would not take place. Indeed, if effective social distancing was not maintained, it was almost certainly a question of when not if.
One only needed to look at the very recent experience of South Korea, a country with an impeccable response to COVID-19, but which has experienced breakthrough clusters of infections once it started to relax social distancing.
It was very clear from the screening statistics that the virus was present in the population and would flare up again if the right conditions for its spread were provided.
The college said it understood and appreciated that a balance needed to be struck between economic and medical priorities, however, this could only be achieved by a genuine and effective discussion between all parties.
Furthermore, any relaxation of measures needed to follow scientifically-based international recommendations and be staggered sufficiently to enable monitoring of cases of infection so as to be able to reverse any change that resulted in increased spread of infections.
It would be truly tragic if unilateral political decisions, taken without seeking and incorporating expert medical advice, were to undo all the success achieved in controlling COVID-19 infections Malta, the college said.