Malta Not Publishing COVID-19 Numbers For First Time As There Are No Health Ministry Staff
Malta is not expected to publish its daily COVID-19 bulletin today, the first time this has happened since the start of the pandemic.
Lovin Malta is informed that the reason the bulletin hasn’t been published is that there is currently no Health Minister, and consequently no ministry staff to publish it.
The Labour Party won the general election by just over 39,000 votes yesterday and Robert Abela was officially inaugurated as Prime Minister today. One of his first tasks will be to form a new Cabinet.
Chris Fearne, who has been Health Minister since 2016, was elected on two districts and will be expected to land a high-profile Cabinet post.
During a recent interview with Lovin Malta, new PN MP Mark Anthony Sammut became the first major politician to call for an end to the daily COVID-19 case updates.
“The main concern isn’t the number of cases but the number of hospitalisations, people who end up in ITU and die,” Sammut said. “If vaccinations and immunity mean that COVID-19 effects are on par with the flu and cols, why are we still treating it as a far more serious disease?”
“As long as hospitalisation, ITU admissions and deaths remain low, I don’t think there’s any need to keep publishing and alarming people with the number of cases.”
Should Malta stop publishing daily COVID-19 numbers for good?
READ NEXT: Four Reasons Why Malta Should Considering Phasing Out Daily COVID-19 Updates
