While they were rescued by the coastguard overnight from Monday to Tuesday and placed in isolation quarantine upon their arrival on the island of Malta, the ordeal of a group of migrants is far from being finished. More than two-thirds of the 94 people collected in the Mediterranean have indeed tested positive for Covid-19. Others still need to be screened, Maltese health authorities said on Tuesday.
The island now has 99 contaminations
So far, 65 migrants have been identified as contaminated and 20 have tested negative. With these new cases, the number of contaminations in Malta reached 99. The presence of the hundred or so migrants, who were attempting to cross to Europe from Libya on a makeshift boat adrift, was reported on Monday by the Organization International Organization for Migration (IOM).
At the height of the pandemic, Malta had closed its ports to all arriving ships, including those that picked up migrants. More than 100,000 migrants attempted to cross the Mediterranean in 2019 and more than 1,200 perished at sea, according to IOM.
World
The landing of the 180 migrants rescued by the Ocean Viking has started in Sicily
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Stuck on a humanitarian boat between Malta and Italy, two migrants jump into the water to swim to Europe
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