Two new COVID-19 testing centres will be set up in Qormi and Burmarrad, Health Ministry Chris Fearne said on Saturday.
The two centres will bolster local virus testing capacity and allow authorities to carry out more swab tests on a daily basis, following a surge in demand for testing in recent weeks.
Malta currently has COVID-19 testing centres in Luqa, Pembroke, Mater Dei Hospital and Gozo. Together, those centres can carry out up to around 2,000 tests a day, and Fearne has said he would like to see that rate increase to 2,500.
On Friday, Fearne had also said that authorities had engaged more lab technicians to ensure labs, where tests are processed, would be able to keep up with the increased testing rates.
Testing backlog could have led to more cases
Malta’s testing rate per capita is among the highest in the world, but a surge in demand for tests late in July led to significant delays in testing times, with some people reporting that they had been given testing appointments up to 10 days after they first called the 111 COVID-19 helpline.
Speaking on Saturday, Fearne said that backlog could be in part to blame for the resurgence in coronavirus case numbers, as potentially infected people went about their lives for longer before being tested.
“Instead of September, the resurgence came one month earlier,” the minister said. He was speaking during the Newsbook Hour radio programme aired on 103 Malta’s Heart.
Mass events
The spread of virus was further exacerbated by large-scale events which brought people into close contact with one another, the Health Minister acknowledged.
He said that the advice of hotel sector lobbyist Tony Zahra had proven to be wrong.
Zahra, who leads the Malta Hotel and Restaurant Association, had been at the forefront of demands to do away with COVID-19 restrictions and dubbed public health warnings about the virus spreading “project fear”.
He has since said that Malta may have opened up to mass events “too fast”.
Fearne said mass events had caused a multiplier effect.
"It's one thing for an infected person to be in contact with a group of 10, and another if they're with 1,000," he said.
Virus 'is not seasonal'
Fearne said that the evidence showed that the coronavirus was not a seasonal virus which died down in the summer months.
“This is not like the influenza. Case numbers went down, in Malta and in Europe, because we implemented containment measures and people maintained social distance,” he said.