19 new cases, record equalled; 188 in all

Health Superintendent Charmaine Gauci yesterday said 19 new cases of Coronavirus were recorded in the previous 24 hours.

This equals the record of 19 cases which had been registered on 25 March.

This brings the total number of Coronavirus cases to 188, she said when addressing the media. Fourteen of the last cases were locally transmitted, five were related to travelling.

The number of patients who have recovered in a precarious state in the ITU still stands at two, while another two patients are still being kept at the ITU, with one of them being critical.

Twelve patients are being treated at the Infectious Diseases Unit, while another 14 are being kept at the St Thomas Hospital.

Gauci said that the health authorities were expecting the number of cases to gradually increase - 32 have thus been registered in the last two days. Measures that the government put in place were intended to flatten the curve so as not to inundate the health services with huge numbers of cases at the same time, she said, again insisting on the need to practise physical (or social) distancing.

One of the local transmission cases involves the male worker, aged 23, at the Safi Lidl supermarket. In this case, the store has been closed until it is disinfected and a contact tracing exercise is taking place. Any customers who went to the store since 27 March and who experience symptoms is asked to contact the health authorities.

The other cases involving a local transmission included women aged 24, 45, 62, 56, 20, 27 and 65. The latter case is of a woman who was already at Mater Dei Hospital for an unrelated condition, and who has now been transferred to the Infectious Diseases Unit.

Six men also contracted the disease locally - they are aged 33, 22, 64, 42, 33 and 47, with the latter case linked to another person who had tested positive.