Mass events: Culture Ministry working closely with health authorities
The Culture Ministry is collaborating with the health authorities and is providing them with all information related to upcoming events, while also preparing to take the necessary measures in the event of an outbreak of Coronavirus.
While this year’s Carnival celebrations came to a close yesterday, the events calendar for 2020 is jam packed with a variety of festivals, exhibitions and feasts. As many countries step up preventive measures in the face of the Coronavirus outbreak, this newsroom asked the ministry whether such mass activities and events would be cancelled and whether there will be any restricting measures.
Currently, there are no cases of the COVID-19 virus in Malta, and that thermal screening and sentinel screening have been placed at entry points in the country. While Italy started reporting the first Coronavirus deaths, concern has grown locally about the virus reaching the Maltese islands. Fake news and misinformation led people to panic, with many raiding the supermarkets and stocking up on goods.
Speaking to The Malta Independent, a spokesperson for the Culture Ministry said: “We need to see what actions will be taken up by the Health Authorities and, at this point, there are no further comments to make over and above the statement made by the relevant authorities.”
Teachers, students who travelled to affected areas told to stay home
On Tuesday, the Education Ministry, together with the Health Ministry, published a circular sent to all State, Church and Independent Schools.
The circular reads that staff or students who have visited China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Iran , Italy (Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy, Piedmont, Veneto, ie. all the north of Italy above Tuscany) during the past days must stay at home for 14 days and if they develop symptoms of fever, cough or shortness of breath, “they need to phone the Disease Prevention and Control Unit (IDCU) within the Superintendence of Public Health, Ministry for Health on 21324086 and the unit will guide them accordingly.”
Employees that travelled to these countries are requested to advise their line manager regarding the need to stay at home according to the stipulated days mentioned. Employees will be considered as excused on presentation of travel evidence when individual returns back to work.
12 dead in Italy
Italy is seeking to rally international support for its efforts to contain the country’s virus outbreak as its death toll rose to 12 and the caseload reached 374. More Europeans linked to Italy got sick, while the World Health Organization urged a scaled-up response.
Italian PM Giuseppe Conte’s government, which has been struggling to contain the rapidly spreading virus, urged cooperation from its European neighbors, not isolation and discrimination.
“Viruses don’t know borders and they don’t stop at them,” Health Minister Roberto Speranza insisted at the start of a crisis meeting with WHO and European Union representatives in Rome.
Twelve people have died in Italy, all of them elderly, with other ailments or both, civil protection chief Angelo Borelli said.
The Italian government has been defending its handling of the crisis, even as it acknowledges alarm over its growing caseload — more than any other country outside Asia — and inability to locate the origin.
Elsewhere in Europe, Greece registered its first positive COVID-19 case, in a woman who had recently traveled to Italy’s afflicted north, after Austria, Croatia and Switzerland reported their first cases on Tuesday from people who had also recently visited the region.
Spain reported nine cases since Monday, all with an Italy link and two of France’s five new cases had ties to Italy. Local authorities in Austria took quarantine measures after two unconfirmed cases had an Italy link, only to remove them when tests came back negative.
Overnight, Italy registered 52 more cases, bringing its total to 374. Hard-hit Lombardy, where 10 towns are on army-manned lockdown, still had the most cases with 258 — four of them children. But Veneto saw a spike of 28 new cases overnight, bringing its total to 71.
In France, a 60-year-old Frenchman died in a Paris hospital, France’s second virus-related death. His case puzzled and worried French authorities, because he was one of two new patients who tested positive for the virus in France this week who had not traveled to a “risk zone,” including Italy or China, according authorities in his home region north of Paris.
The Italian national health system has been overwhelmed with distribution problems slowing the delivery of masks and protective gear for medical personnel in the hard-hit areas. In addition, officials are battling to contain panic among Italians who are stocking up on bottled water, long-life milk and other nonperishable food that have left some supermarket shelves empty.
Italy is in some ways a victim of its own scrupulousness, with virologists noting that it is registering so many cases because it’s actively looking for them.
Borelli noted that Italy had tested 9,462 people already — more than 95% of whom have tested negative. Of those who are positive, twothirds are being treated at home without requiring hospitalization.
Italian goods not contaminated, cargo handlers told
Cargo handlers and other port workers have been urged not to “get carried away by the wave of fear”, and to stop refusing to handle goods coming from Italy.
On Tuesday, cargo handlers at the cargo terminal in Valletta and at the Freeport refused to unload cargo coming from Italy due to a lack of doctors to inspect and clear the vessels. Port workers are instructed, by their unions, not to board any incoming vessels before these are given the all clear. There were delays this week as even the doctors were refusing to board the vessels over virus fears.
In a statement, the Italia Viva Malta committee expressed its concern over the decision by dockers and on-board suppliers in Paola and Valletta to interrupt cargo unloading activities.
“Three vessels were unable to unload the goods yesterday, including Eurocargo Malta, Grimaldi Lines and Maria Grazia Onorato, of the Onorato Group,” the committee said.
It relaunched the appeal made by
Italian Minister of Agriculture and Food Policies, Teresa Bellanova, and invited Maltese operators not to feed an unjustified panic.
“In the spirit of working to promote a strengthening of collaboration and trade between the two countries, we ask our Maltese friends who work daily in unloading goods not to get carried away by the wave of fear already too much aggravated, as the goods coming from Italy are not contaminated. It has been demonstrated that there is no risk of virus transmission through food and packaging, and there are already sufficient guarantees of healthy, high-quality products. We hope that the European Commission will also intervene to clarify this,” said Sergio Passariello, President of Italy Viva Malta. “We appeal to our Maltese friends to continue to collaborate constructively with the aim of facing such a delicate moment through collaboration and exchange of information, without building barriers not supported by valid justifications and capable of damaging our economies,” Passariello said.
Malta ‘not prepared’ for outbreak – MUMN
The Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses reiterated yesterday that Malta is not prepared to face a possible outbreak of Coronavirus on the islands.
Information given during a press conference on Tuesday exposed Malta’s lack of preparedness, the MUMN said.
It was totally untrue 350 nurses from Emergency Department, Intensive Therapy Unit and the Infectious Disease Unit have been trained. Such units have only 220 nurses, the MUMN said.
From Tuesday’s conference, it emerged that the preparatory plan is to have only 14. That implies that Malta and Gozo is only prepared for 14 cases only. If an airplane or a cruise liner would result with more than 14 potential infected patients (as happened abroad were 100s were infected both on planes and on cruise liners), Malta would not have the facilities nor the nurses to attend to such patients, the MUMN said.
MUMN said it was proven right that nurses are not being trained nor prepared for patients suffering from Coronavirus.
MUMN was also proven right that no alternative isolation units were mentioned outside MDH which should have been the focus of any preparation plan for Coronavirus.