Public health emergency declaration 'an absolute priority' - PN

The Nationalist Party maintains that declaring a public health emergency should be "an absolute priority" at this stage, despite Superintendent Charmaine Gauci ensuring that all necessary measures were taken without the need to declare so.

"We want everyone to have the peace of mind that decisions aren't being taken by politicians," PN MP Claudio Grech explained. 

Declaring a public health emergency was one of four proposals outlined by the Nationalist Party during a press conference on Friday. Grech appealed to the government to consider establishing a COVID-19 advisory board, based on similar consultative entities adopted world-over to tackle the pandemic. 

He said that such a board could meet two, three times a day, while publishing the minutes of every meeting held together with advice given to government. 

The Nationalist Party further proposed the establishment of common targets that would guide the implementation of COVID-19 preventative measures.

"We need goals related to how many positive cases there are everyday, how many cases there are in the ITU, number of recoveries," Grech said.

The measures published would then be tied to how these numbers fluctuate.