Coronavirus: Self-quarantine rules apply to people who visited anywhere in Italy

As from tomorrow, any students or educators who visited Sicily must stay home for 14 days after returning back to Malta, Chris Fearne said.

Sister newspaper Illum reported on Tuesday that a group of children who visited Sicily with their football nursery and had returned to their schools on coming back to Malta were asked to go back home, after parents protested in light of the rapid spread of coronavirus in Italy.

The government’s self-quarantine guidelines have required that anyone who visited Covid-19 high-risk areas - China, Singapore, Japan, Iran, South Korea and Northern Italy - stay away from work or school for 14 days, but Sicily was not on that list.

The Health Minister, speaking in Parliament this afternoon, said however that any students who visited Sicily or mainland Italy would now have to self-quarantine for two weeks.

Education Minister Owen Bonnici said the government was acting to put parents’ mind at rest and had extended the self-quarantine requirements to include Sicily too.

Bonnici also pointed out that some confusion had resulted after the Malta Union of Teachers issued a directive to its members disallowing activities involving more than 30 students, leading to parents' day being postponed. The minister underlined that this wasn’t a decision the government had taken, but one made by the MUT and the Union of Professional Educators. “The government respects the unions’ decisions, taken in accordance with the law,” he said.

Fearne went on to clarify that the restrictions on mass events announced by the Prime Minister earlier today also apply to schools. Robert Abela said that outdoor events of over 2,000 people and indoor events of more than 750 are now banned, as the government steps up its measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

The Health Minister said that indoor events, such as school assemblies, where more than 750 students would gather could also not take place. In the case of outdoor events, since no school had 2,000 students, the ban shouldn’t cause a problem to activities such as lunch breaks, which take place outside and can still go ahead as normal, he said.

Government’s measures commensurate with level of virus spread

Fearne, who was answering a number of questions from MPs, emphasised that the measures the government was progressively putting in place were commensurate with the level of spread of the virus in Malta.

He said that, till now, all cases of Covid-19 infection had been imported to Malta from abroad, and that there had not been any instances of transmission in the community amongst people who were not family members.

Five people have been tested positive for the coronavirus - a 12-year-old Italian girl and her parents who returned to Malta from a trip to Trentino in Italy, and a 49-year-old Norwegian and his 16-year-old daughter who had also been to northern Italy.

If and when the the situation changes and the virus does start spreading between people in Malta, the government would take the necessary measures, Fearne said. “This could happen tonight, tomorrow, or never,” he said.

And it would be at such a stage that the safety of public transport, for instance, would have to be looked at.

“Not all measures have to happen at once - they are put in place according to the stage of spread of the virus,” he said.

Cases in Gozo to be brought to Malta, for now

If a case of coronavirus where to be found in Gozo, the Health Minister said that, at this stage, the patient would be brought to Malta for treatment. The safety of Gozo Channel employees would be safeguarded in transporting such an infected passenger, he said.

Should the spread of the virus worsen, however, Gozitan patients would start being treated at Gozo General Hospital, which Fearne said was equipped for such an eventuality.

Italian Covid-19 strain more virulent

Replying to a question by PN MP Ryan Callus, Fearne confirmed that reports indicated that there were two strains of Covid-19, and that the type of virus found in Italy is a mutated and deadlier version of that which originated in China.

The mutated strain is more virulent and could be spread more easily, he said.

Fearne said the high mortality rate in Italy could be explained both by the presence of the mutated strain, and possibly also because the number of people infected with the virus was greater than is known, leading to an over-inflation of the percentage of patients who succumb to Covid-19 infection