Second case at a supermarket
Public Health Superintendent Charmaine Gauci said yesterday six new Coronavirus cases were recorded in the previous 24 hours, bringing the total to 299. The number of swab tests carried out amounted to 299.
Replying to questions from the media she admitted one of the new cases regarded a supermarket employee. Neither Prof Gauci nor the journalist who asked her to confirm identified the supermarket in question, quite differently from the previous case at the Lidl in Safi which was freely mentioned on the social media even before confirmation.
The new cases include a onemonth old baby, who becomes the youngest Coronavirus patient in Malta.
The baby boy had already been in hospital, she said, but an investigation is being carried out to see if other babies in the ward have been infected.
She said that the small number registered yesterday, compared to the 52 cases registered on Tuesday, does not signify much as single days cannot be seen as a trend.
She said five of the cases registered in the previous 24 hours were locally transmitted, the other was related to travelling.
One of the persons who tested positive in the last 24 hours was a 57-year-old woman who went to Mater Dei Hospital with an unrelated condition.
The other cases were of a 47-yearold woman and three men aged 63, 56 (a health care worker) and 52, with the latter having returned from England.
In some of the cases, a contact tracing exercise is being carried out among family members who were in contact with the infected persons. With regard to the health care worker, the exercise includes the worker's colleagues but no patients were exposed to him, Gauci said.