As long as a cluster of positive Covid-19 cases is followed and contact tracing is carried out effectively, then the situation with regards to the pandemic will be kept under control, statistician Vincent Marmara said in his weekly vlog with The Malta Independent on Sunday.

The past week saw 12 new cases of the virus, coming off the back of a week where no new cases had been found.

Out of those 12, seven form part of the same cluster – one which started from a weekend-long party held at a hotel.

Addressing this, Marmara noted that it is not the first cluster of cases that there have been in Malta during the pandemic.

He said that as long as a cluster is closely followed and that contact tracing is done where necessary then it is a situation which can be kept under control.

The fact that the majority of last week’s new cases form part of the same cluster is reflected in the reproduction number of the virus, which has increased to 0.41 this week.

The reproduction number of the virus is one of the key figures which countries across the world have been trying to reduce ever since the COVID-19 pandemic began. The aim for countries has been to reduce the ratio to a level of 1 – which would mean that one person would transmit the virus to one other person.

Malta’s reproduction number has been below 1 since 20 May, now over two months ago.

Marmara said that one must follow the reproduction number of a daily basis in order to analyse where the best point is to change cycles in order to have a more representative idea of what the r-factor is.

Looking to overseas, Marmara observed how the number of cases in Spain had increased over the past week, but noted that the number of cases in Italy had remained stable.

Australia, he said, is an interesting case study as it is now in the winter season.  Here cases have continued to increase when compared to last week.

There are interesting studies being undertaken in this regard in order to establish the effect that the temperature may have on the virus and whether, like in the case of influenza, a lower temperature may result in the virus transmission being increased.

Source: Malta Independent