Visitors who pass through Malta’s airport should be required to produce a certificate indicating a recent negative swab test, the Civil Society Network said.

In a statement on Tuesday, it said it was making this proposal in light of the biggest increase in COVID-19 cases in Malta in the past weeks.

For the past 12 days, newly detected cases have been in the double digits, with a number of cases linked to mass events such as pool parties, village feasts and gatherings in the Paceville clubbing district. Some of the cases were also imported.

Persons who failed to produce evidence of a recent swab test should be made to take one as a matter of urgency and remain in mandatory quarantine until a result can be given, CSN said.

It said that because of the number of sporadic cases that emerged from swab tests, there was the need for some form of control that was more robust than the inadequate measures propagated by Prime Minister Robert Abela.

It said that as result of such inadequate measures, Malta has seen the biggest increase in cases since the start of the fight against the disease.

“This is an unprecedented situation – the measures taken initially, which were instigated by the Superintendent of Public Health, are now overruled, while in just a few days, cases have skyrocketed to levels seen at the worst of the first wave.”

CSN hoped the government would start to listen to its medical experts, so that public health found itself as a top priority once more.

While daily testing should continue to increase, there should be more measures to limit the spread, including the rule, and its enforcement, to prevent groups of larger than eight from getting together, limiting the possibility of clusters.