Updated | Mater Dei Hospital left without any power for around 50 minutes after generators fail to kick in

Updated at 9:55am with health ministry statement

A power cut was reported at Mater Dei Hospital in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Sources who spoke to this newspaper said generators failed to kick-in, leaving a number of wards in sweltering heat.

Replying to questions by this newspaper, a health ministry spokesperson confirmed Mater Dei Hospital experienced a brief power outage.

“Whilst power was maintained in critical equipment in areas such as ITU, NPICU and theaters, other parts of the hospital had an outage for 52 minutes before the in-house engineering team remedied the situation and all normal activity continued,” a spokesperson said.

He said no clinical incident occurred as a result of the fault.

The matter has been identified, and rectified, with test carried out on the network being successful.

“An investigation into the incident is being conducted,” he said.

Patients and their family who spoke to this newspaper said the power cuts were reported at around 1:30am.

Mater Dei Hospital was left without any electricity for around 50 minutes, before electricity was restored at around 2:15am.

Power cuts were also reported at a number of localities across Malta, with Naxxar residents spending the night without any electricity. Residents who spoke to this newspaper said the power outage started at 8pm, and electricity was restored at 8:30am.

Power cuts were also reported in Zejtun, with outages reported at around 3am.

Enemalta CEO Jonathan Cardona said Malta hit a new record of consumption on Monday, with peak load being reached between 2pm and 3pm.

He said over the past week 65 faults developed on the high-tension cable system – 56 in Malta and nine in Gozo.

Cardona said 46 faults were repaired – 37 in Malta and nine Gozo – and work was ongoing to repair the remaining 19 faults.