20% of all COVID-19 patients in Malta never even exhibited any symptoms, Public Health Superintendent Charmaine Gauci announced during today’s press conference.

That means that, of the total 465 people who tested positive, 93 – or one in every five – were asymptomatic.

Gauci elaborated on this statistic, saying 9% of all cases occurred in the Ħal Far Tent Village due to the lack of reports on symptoms among the residents there.

When you remove that cohort of people from the equation, however, you’re still left with 11% of all COVID-19 positive people in the community who had exhibited zero symptoms despite being infected with the virus.

Asymptomatic cases have been one of the biggest worries in many countries’ battle against COVID-19.

While infected patients exhibiting the same symptoms as seasonal influenza is already an issue, things got even muddier when it was reported that people can be carriers of the virus without the need for it to actually affect them in any way.

One of the most effective strategies to combat this reality and assess the real situation has been rigorous testing… and that’s where Malta shines.

In the last couple of days, the nation has started increasing the number of daily swab tests it performs yet again, steadily reaching even the previously highest figures back when a spike was recorded a couple of weeks ago.

In the last 24 hours alone, 1,253 swabs were conducted, bringing Malta’s total number of tests up to 32,989.

What do you make of this statistic?